


We Can Be (Heroes)

by rikke_leonhart



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Anxiety, Disappearance, I love Heroes, M/M, Pre-Canon, The YOI/Heroes fic no one asked for, Victor needs a hug, Yuuri is a canon mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-10 04:43:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 42,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12904320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rikke_leonhart/pseuds/rikke_leonhart
Summary: Slight YOI/Heroes fusion: When Katsuki Yuuri disappears from his hotel room in Sochi without a trace, it changes the entire course of Victor’s life.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> These losers in love have ruined my life. I have been wanting to write this plot for years by now, and I have attempted it across several fandoms, but have only succeeded now. I basically binged Heroes for the nth time and I love Chris Eccleston, like, a ridiculous amount, so YOI/Heroes needed to happen. The word count is a testament to me obviously not being thorough enough with my by now infamous editing machete. Fanmix to come because why not 8D Fic all done, I just really need *time* to edit.

*

 

“Yuuri? Yuuri, will you please open the door?”

 

*

 

_“Yuuri, pick up your phone. Ciao Ciao says you won’t leave your room. I know you feel like the world is ending right now, but I’m here for you, okay?”_

 

*

 

“Yuuri, you haven’t let any of us down, so please come out. No one’s mad at you and no one’s disappointed in you.”

 

*

 

_“Yuuri, please pick up your phone, I’m worried – we’re all worried for you. I know you’re in a bad place right now, but… I’m really worried, okay? I love you. We all love you. Please… call me back. Or call Ciao Ciao. Or Mari. Anyone. Please?”_

 

*

 

_“Yuuri, it’s me, I’m… so, so scared that something’s happened to you. Please – I – fuck, I’m sorry, just… please call me. If you can.”_

 

*

 

“- unfortunately the fifth consecutive gold medal for Victor Nikiforov was overshadowed by the disappearance of sixth placed Japanese skater Yuuri Katsuki, who hasn’t been seen since his free skate yesterday afternoon.”

 

“Jason, this has never happened before in the history of figure skating, a skater simply vanishing into thin air during a competition… I’m worried to think that maybe a crime has been committed.”

 

“You and me both, Sam. We’ll keep him and his family in our prayers, and hope for his safe return.”

 

*

 

_“Mari promised she’d call me if she heard anything at all. Ciao Ciao, I… I can’t -”_

 

“I know, Phichit. I know.”

 

*

 

“We should look into getting you personal protection, Victor. If that could happen to a competing skater right under our noses, it could happen to you.”

 

“Yakov, no one’s going to kidnap me.”

 

“Vitya, didn’t you hear anything? He’s gone, there’s not even any sign of _resisting_. I’m not taking any chances with your safety.”

 

“Yakov… No one’s going to care, because I’m taking the next season off.”

 

“You’re _what_?!”

 

*

 

“Five days after the conclusion of the Grand Prix Final in Sochi, what should have been a celebration of the fifth consecutive Grand Prix Final gold medal for Victor Nikiforov has been entirely eclipsed by the continued disappearance of Yuuri Katsuki from Japan. We don’t know much as of this moment, as the police has been keeping a tight lid on any information pertaining Katsuki. What we know is from a grainy surveillance tape, and he’s seen entering his hotel room, but he never comes out.”

 

“It’s frightening, absolutely terrible, it’s like he’s just ceased existing. It gives me _chills_. Earlier, we saw Katsuki’s coach Celestino leaving the hotel where all the skaters had been staying and he looked devastated.”

 

“Jeff, this is absolutely devastating to the _sport_ , the fact that we simply don’t know what has happened to him is the worst thing. It’s a tragedy that no one in their wildest dreams could ever have imagined. I can’t even begin to imagine how his family and friends are feeling at the moment.”

 

“And then amidst all this tragedy, Victor Nikiforov announced that he won’t be returning next season, leaving his future rather unclear, and – Sandy, I daresay it was smart of him if he didn’t want too much attention, but, and I can’t believe I’m going to say this, and I never thought I would, but who actually _cares_ about Nikiforov not skating right now? I’d go so far as to say _fu_ -”

 

“Jeff, language!”

 

*

 

“Hello?”

 

“….Minako-sensei?”

 

“ _Yuuri?_ ”

 

“…I’m…here.”

 

“God, oh my _god_ , Yuuri!”

 

“I’m sorr-”

 

“Oh god, _Yuuri_! Where _are_ you? Oh god, I’m _so_ – Where – ”

 

“I’m sorry, I’m s-so sorry, please don’t- don’t, d- d- _cry_ – ”

 

“Yuuri, where are you?”

 

“I- I need – I nee – ”

 

“Breathe, Yuuri, breathe, deep breaths, breathe with me, breathe _for_ me, you can do that, come on, in – and out – yes?”

 

“…I need, I, I need help.”

 

“Anything.”

 

*


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Editing, editing, editing~

“Victor, are you ever going to move from that computer? I think you’re making butt grooves in my couch.”

 

Victor shrugs. “Possibly.” When he glances over at Chris, he’s met with a distinctly unimpressed look.

 

“You’ve watched that clip how many times now?”

 

Victor has lost count. Yuuri Katsuki on the screen makes music with his body. Victor could have had the video muted and he would still be able to hear it resonate in his bones. It’s a completely different skate than the disaster from the Grand Prix Final just hours before he disappeared and it’s like watching two completely different people. Victor hadn’t watched it during the actual competition – he hadn’t paid much attention to anything, really, because everything off the ice hadn’t felt real.

 

“You need to be more specific about which clip,” he says, which, well. He thinks he’s watched everything about Yuuri Katsuki that exists on the internet. Twice. Probably more.

 

“Obviously,” Chris says. “So what’s next, o’ great detective?”

 

Yuuri Katsuki has taken over his life. It sounds insane even to his own ears, but perhaps there’s a metric of poetic justice. Victor is not self-absorbed enough to think that this happened to make him aware of the world that revolves without him, but that is what happened nevertheless. It’s like Victor is waking up to reality as it is.

 

Victor, tired and burnt out, suddenly made aware that the world never stopped turning, that even without him on the ice, it still moves. The competitions continue, new programs are skated.

 

It just feels more like the world should have stopped with Yuuri Katsuki.

 

It seems unfair, when Victor watches Katsuki’s best programs, that he never knew this young man, that he never took an interest in him while he had the chance, but for a long time, everything had seemed so dull. Katsuki’s best programs are breathtaking. His worst are truly tragic, almost frighteningly brutal, if only because the light completely vanishes within Katsuki after each popped jump. It reminds him of seeing him in the lobby as he turned away from Victor. It still gnaws at him and makes his throat go tight.

 

“You knew him, didn’t you?” Victor knows Chris knew Katsuki – even if just peripherally. He hasn’t succeeded yet in making Chris talk about him.

 

Chris scowls. “If you’re going to go all detective on him, I’d rather you didn’t leech off my internet for it.” There’s always some defensiveness in his posture, a measure of protectiveness that Victor doesn’t understand, whenever Chris doesn’t want to talk about Katsuki. It’s often. Victor has never been good at limiting his interests and obsessions to only involve himself.

 

“Maybe I should go to Japan,” Victor muses and Chris’ eyebrows rise almost to his hairline. It’s not a particularly flattering look on him.

 

“Why on earth would you go to Japan? There’s a decent sushi place right around the corner.”

 

“Maybe go to his childhood home and ask around a bit, maybe if they have a clue what happened?”

 

“Don’t you dare,” Chris snaps. “Don’t you _dare_ make those people a part of your – of your _games_! That’s low, even for you.”

 

“Even for me? Ouch,” Victor frowns.

 

Chris sits down on the coffee table by the couch. “Victor, you didn’t know him, you never even considered _breathing_ in his direction. Why is this so important to you now? Is it just so you can say that the great Victor Nikiforov solved the mystery of Yuuri Katsuki’s disappearance? I think… he, his family, and _you_ , deserve better than that.”

 

It stings. “I just want to know what happened.”

 

“Let’s say you actually find out new things, new facts, that you actually figure out what happened to him, Victor, what if he turns out to be dead?”

 

Victor doesn’t want to think about that. It’s not an option. “Do you want him to be dead?”

 

“Victor,” Chris frowns. “He was my _friend_.”

 

“I wouldn’t know,” Victor shrugs despite knowing it’s not going to endear him to Chris at the moment. He’s been camping out in Austria for the past three weeks – avoiding Yakov and everyone else for quite a bit longer. “You never talk about him.”

 

Chris looks like he’s debating the least messy way of murdering Victor, before he sighs heavily. Chris is, quite probably, the oldest, most loyal friend he has, probably the only _real_ friend he has, and he’d rather not alienate him, but Victor doesn’t _understand_. He doesn’t understand what it is about himself that makes Chris not want to tell him about what kind of person Yuuri Katsuki was. Is. _Was_. It’s confusing. Of course he wishes with all his being and with all the breath he has in his body, that Katsuki is alive, he just doesn’t see why, if after these months Katsuki is alive, why hasn’t he given word? Is he unable to? Is he captured somewhere, is ransom being demanded that no one knows about?

 

Apparently, Chris has decided that now is a time where he’ll talk. “Yuuri was… the nicest skater in the men’s division. Probably one of the nicest persons you’d ever meet. He was always nice to me, even when I was, probably, a bit handsy at times. He’s cute, you know?”

 

Oh, Victor knows. He’s spent a lot of time finding high resolution pictures on google. A _lot_ of time. He’s well aware of how creepy that comes across.

 

“His coach used to have a well-developed radar for people homing in on Yuuri, though, he ran a lot of interference because Yuuri’s nerves very often got the best of him. I’ve seen him skate outside of competitions, and he was so _good_ , it’s not fair he never got to show it off properly.” Chris sounds both wistful and even somewhat jealous, which Victor thinks is an odd combination, and it’s not even jarring how Chris doesn’t seem to know whether or not Yuuri should be spoken of in past or present tense.

 

“Did you know him well?” It seems like a weird question, because Victor remembers spending time with Chris at the competitions they both participated in, and he thinks he’s probably taken up almost all Chris’ free time as it were – but maybe Chris squirreled him away, kept him hidden from Victor? Or maybe Victor’s world had already been so grey-tinted at the edges that he wouldn’t have seen him anyway?

 

Chris smiles, lips twisted wry. “I guess? Not as well as I’d have liked. He was very shy, very reserved, I don’t think any of us really can say that we knew him, probably only Phichit Chulanont, they were roommates and rink mates in Detroit.”

 

Victor has heard the name; has seen him mentioned online and in fan forums, but while Victor’s stalking skills have improved by leaps and bounds over the past three months of his retirement, he hasn’t stooped that low. Not yet. He’s found Chulanont’s twitter and Instagram, but he kept his finger at hovering over the follow button, and he hasn’t pressed it. Not yet. “He wasn’t at the Final, was he?”

 

Chris shakes his head. “He didn’t qualify for it, but I keep thinking, what if he _had_ been there? Would Yuuri still be here, too? Would anything have changed? I don’t think so, but I don’t like thinking about the what ifs. It makes me sad.”

 

To be entirely honest, Victor doesn’t exactly know why he’s so obsessed. Logically, it makes no sense at all, because Victor never even spoke to him, never even were aware they were orbiting the same people. He wishes so badly, in the night when he can’t sleep, that he’d noticed him sooner, had seen his sad, lovely eyes and beautiful programs, had been able to talk properly to him… maybe he wouldn’t have wanted to talk to Victor at all, no matter how he went about it. Maybe he’d have smiled so sweetly, offered a tentative branch – maybe he’d have accepted Victor’s (always overwhelming) overtures of friendship. Maybe. So many maybes.

 

Maybe Victor would’ve been a different person.

 

Chris is right. The what ifs make him sad, too.

 

*

 

Chris tells him one morning, that he’s talked to Phichit, and Victor is welcome to visit.

 

“Thailand?” Victor asks, frowning.

 

“No,” Chris rolls his eyes. “Detroit.” _Idiot_ , goes unspoken.

 

*

 

Victor spends the entire flight trying and failing to sleep.

 

He has a binder with pictures and notes and questions, and he’s trying (and failing) to not come off as a complete creeper.

 

He wonders what he’ll say to Phichit Chulanont when he gets there, what he can say that will convince Phichit that he’s not as insane as he sounds, that he doesn’t understand why he’s interested, only that he saw the videos, saw Katsuki skate and he _felt_ it. Still feels it, the breathtaking videos where Katsuki is the embodiment of music. The terrible programs that Victor is starting to feel on his own body, as if the bruises Katsuki sustained while falling during his jumps, are phantom pains as penance. For what, he’s not entirely sure.

 

It’s oddly freeing to _feel_ again, feel something that isn’t the ache of his feet and the crack of his joints.

 

It’s like taking the first breath on a brisk Spring morning, the way air feels cleaner, crisper, revitalizing. It’s like his ears have been hearing static for a long time but suddenly the buzz is gone. Like someone readjusted his worldview and it slid into sharp view again, and he hadn’t even _noticed_ he was seeing everything out of focus.

 

The world has never looked this way, he’s sure. He’d gone to the rink with Chris and he almost wanted to go back on the ice with him; the reality of the cold ice beneath his feet had almost seemed fresh and new and he’d almost stepped onto it. Almost.

 

Back on Chris’ couch, he’d looked more at Katsuki. Obviously.

 

Yuuri Katsuki’s online presence has been, prior and up to the Grand Prix Final, abysmal. Before the Final, it hadn’t been updated in almost a year, and that had just been a picture of a soda can with no text. Phichit is much, much better. In fact, his presence on social media has probably reached level God, because his Instagram is a literal goldmine of Katsuki content, something Victor found out when he finally stopped pretending that he isn’t an internet stalker and just clicked on Phichit’s name. A video of Katsuki laughing, a picture of the two of them in matching poses, both with drawn moustaches on their faces, Katsuki reading and smiling and with too many marshmallows stuffed in his mouth.

 

He’s lovely.

 

Victor thinks of him not existing in this world anymore, and his heart aches. It’s new – _feeling_ so much. As if he’s out of practice feeling and it’s exhausting, but he won’t trade it for anything. Victor just wants to know what happened to him, to the beautiful young man with the sad eyes.

 

What can he say to Phichit that conveys that perfectly?

 

*

 

“You have approximately the time it takes me to pack the last of my clothes to convince me to tell you about Yuuri.”

 

Victor, seated on what he supposes used to be Katsuki’s bed, is facing Phichit Chulanont, who is very obviously packing down the rest of his life in Detroit. Phichit, who is smaller than he appears on Instagram, is formidable in his own way, and the easy smile Victor has seen all over social media is nowhere to be found. The side of the room Victor currently is in seems like it’s been empty for a while. It’s the same with empty houses – the moment no one lives there anymore, it looks like it has lost its soul, the windows turning into empty eyes, the light gone out from within.

 

“You’re not talking,” Phichit says and turns to his bag, which, alarmingly, doesn’t need all that much more until it’s full and the room completely empty.

 

The clock is ticking, Victor realizes, and even with Chris willing to help him despite not being able to rationalize his sudden interest, he’s quite sure that this is the one chance he has with Phichit. He desperately wants to not blow it.

 

“Where are you going?”

 

He’s not sure why that is what he starts with, but it does make Phichit pause. He turns slightly to Victor. “I’m going back to Bangkok for a bit to train, and Ciao Ciao is going to fly out and continue coaching me, so…”

 

“Why?”

 

Phichit shrugs as he turns back to religiously folding a t-shirt. “I miss home.” He very pointedly looks away from Victor as he says this, but Victor gets the feeling that Phichit is very aware of how Victor reacts as he says; “It hasn’t been the same without Yuuri here, anyway.”

 

Victor holds his breath for a beat or two and then exhales, very carefully. “I watched his exhibit skate from NHK last year,” he says cautiously. “It was… _stunning_.”

 

Phichit smiles – Victor can tell even with his back turned. “Yeah, it was, wasn’t it? I told him all the time that he was so good and so talented, but it was like he never really listened. Or maybe he did, but it’s like he only heard it but didn’t understand? Or wasn’t willing to? He always infuriates me, but it’s part of his charm, too.”

 

It appears that Phichit, like Chris, has no idea how to address Katsuki – in past or present. Victor says nothing to it.

 

“I heard from Chris that he was your best friend.”

 

Phichit snorts. “You followed my Instagram, you don’t have to play coy. You’re not the first to follow me for Yuuri. He was quite popular here, even though he never really seemed to be able to believe it.” He makes a hand gesture that seems to encompass everything Yuuri was. “He did this thing where he always thought that people liked him less than they actually did, and it made him afraid of trying new things, or even known things, things he was genuinely good at, while people were watching. Like, they couldn’t possibly like him for who he was.”

 

Yuuri, because Victor can’t keep pretending in his own head that he can refer to him as Katsuki anymore, not with how invested he is already, sounds so, so _loved_. He sounds – so contradictory. His best skates; so breathtaking that Victor can feel the movements in his bones as he glides across the ice on the screen; so anxious that Victor feels like he will lose his newfound breath.

 

Victor tries to breathe around the harsh lump lodged firmly in his throat. “Do you think he’s dead?”

 

Phichit is holding the same t-shirt he’s been trying to fold since Victor stepped into the room, and he stops pretending that he’ll actually pack it down anytime soon. “No,” he promises at length. “How can I? I have to believe he’s alive, somewhere. Do _you_ think he’s dead? You don’t, do you? Or you wouldn’t be here.”

 

“I don’t know, exactly,” Victor admits. “I don’t know what I’m hoping to find. Or, well, I hope to find him alive and well and in hiding, maybe ready to go back on the ice. I just don’t know what I’ll find if I’ll ever find him or even the traces of him. I don’t even know where to start.”

 

Phichit sits down on his own bed, now sitting directly opposite of Victor, and now that Victor is looking properly, Phichit looks tired, bone-deep weariness. “Yuuri would _freak_ if he knew you were sitting on his bed right now.”

 

It seems left-field. Victor remembers the Grand Prix Final through the muted, dull lense. The glare of the ice and the heavy weight of the medal around his neck like shackles. He remembers the look in Yuuri’s eyes when he turned away from the offer of a photo, and he highly doubts that Yuuri would appreciate his presence.

 

“Really?”

 

“There were posters,” Phichit promises and smiles for the first time, a real one, since Victor arrived. “ _So_ many posters. They were all sent back to Hasetsu when I packed down his stuff, but he’d have combusted from embarrassment by now if he knew you were here. All his childhood dreams come true.”

 

Victor has stalked enough fan forums to know what Hasetsu is. He just doesn’t understand how it could go from having posters of him, to walking away from him.

 

“After the competition, I asked him if he wanted a commemorative photo,” he says and it feels heavy in his mouth, like a confession, and he realizes it’s the first time he’s said it out loud. “I wonder if – if maybe I could’ve done something.”

 

Phichit blinks, then frowns. “At the Final? Ciao Ciao didn’t mention that… but that means you could be the last person he spoke to.”

 

“He didn’t say anything,” Victor corrects. “He was looking at me and – he looked so _sad_ , so I thought, what could I do to make him – just talk to me? Or just talk to someone?”

 

For some reason, Phichit rubs a hand angrily over his eyes. “You didn’t know, but he probably thought you didn’t know who he was and that he was just a fan and not a competitor. Damn it, Yuuri.”

 

There’s no word for the awful feeling of heaviness that sinks in his stomach. “That’s – ” He thinks how it must have looked from Yuuri’s eyes and he thinks he understands. “I _wouldn’t_.”

 

“It doesn’t have anything to do with you – _didn’t_ – doesn’t, oh god,” Phichit says, then gets up to pace. “Yuuri’s brain is just wired that way, you do know that, yeah?”

 

“I know now,” Victor assures him, because his stalking on the internet has been a goldmine, especially the Japanese fan forums even if he can’t trust Google Translate – sometimes it gave up on him. Even if he hadn’t, Chris confirmed it for him, the way Yuuri Katsuki is his own worst enemy. “I didn’t know it that day.”

 

Phichit looks at him like he’s weighing him, judging him. “I love him like the brother I never had,” he says at length, “but he can be so utterly _stupid_. He probably felt humiliated.”

 

There’s nothing Victor can say that won’t sound like empty platitudes at this point.

 

Phichit sighs and comes to a stand in the middle of the room. “You know what,” he says after a pause. “My flight doesn’t leave until tonight, so let’s go get something to eat and I’ll tell you about the Yuuri Katsuki College experience.”

 

That – that wasn’t what Victor expected from coming here; he doesn’t even know what he wanted to gain from this, but he feels _lucky_. He wonders if anyone would talk so fondly about him if he’d been the one to disappear, or if the world only bemoaned the disappearance of his skating. He hopes that someone would have nice things to say – that Chris would miss him and say it out loud.

 

He doesn’t dwell on it. Instead, he says, “I’d like that.”

 

Phichit throws the last of his t-shirts into the bag and zips it, and as they leave the room, Phichit starts talking again.

 

“During the five years he lived here, did you know that I never saw him pay for his own coffee at all? I swear, everyone thought he was _divine_ , I mean, I obviously agree, but give a guy a _break_ – ”

 

Victor lets Phichit’s voice wash over him as the door clicks closed behind them.

 

*

 

On the plane on the way back to Russia, Victor looks at the two videos Phichit allowed him to have that wasn’t on Instagram already. He wouldn’t tell Victor why exactly he hadn’t put those videos online, only that Victor would have to promise not to upload them anywhere _or else_.

 

Victor is okay with that.

 

*

 

Yuuri is sitting on a couch, an open book in his lap, a cup of tea in his hands, and when the camera gets closer, he looks up and smiles.

 

“Why are you filming?” He asks, smile so sweet.

 

“I’m not,” Phichit says, laughing.

 

Yuuri rolls his eyes. “Three things I don’t understand: how you can buy _anything_ at Wal-Mart, dipping fries in milkshake, and my roommate.”

 

“Mean,” Phichit says, still laughing. “What about yourself?”

 

“Now that I think about it,” Yuuri says carefully, lips twitching, “I don’t understand myself, either.”

 

“Are you having an existential crisis on camera?”

 

“I thought you said you weren’t filming?”

 

“You can’t stop me from bringing quality Katsuki Yuuri content to the world!”

 

Yuuri says something in Japanese that has Phichit sputtering.

 

*

 

There’s no sound except blades on ice as Yuuri spins, spins, spins, a breathtaking, dizzying spin that ends in a beautiful, slight layback, and Yuuri stops, arms stretched out. He holds the pose for a beat, for two, and then his upturned face lowers as it crumbles.

 

Phichit’s breath is sharp in a way that says he’s trying not to breathe at all.

 

*

 

A lump in his throat that makes it difficult to breathe; Victor presses play again and again.

 

*

 

Victor has been back in St. Petersburg for approximately three days and seventeen hours when he’s startled awake by the buzzer by the door going absolutely crazy. Makkachin stretches in his sleep and then burrows further into the blankets. Victor is quite sure that if given the chance, Makkachin could sleep through the apocalypse.

 

The buzzer goes off again.

 

Victor reaches for his phone and squints at the time. A few minutes past two, damn it.

 

The buzzer is insistent.

 

“Alright,” he groans and tries to convince his legs to slide out from bed. He manages, but it’s a close thing. He’d been dreaming, he thinks, but he can’t grasp it. Something about Detroit perhaps. Celestino hadn’t wanted to talk to him, which Victor respects. Celestino had lost a person that had essentially been under his care – not just a skater, but a real, living person who’d been training with him for years.

 

Victor can’t imagine how that must’ve felt and continues to feel – it makes him feel cold, and something tightens in his stomach.

 

It’s cold and he checks the buzzer.

 

It’s Yuri.

 

“Hey,” he says once Yuri’s been let up and the door closed behind him. “Isn’t it past your bedtime? Do you need to borrow a watch? Or maybe you need flour? Sugar? Spare skates?”

 

“Shut up,” Yuri says, not making a move to pull off either his jacket or his gloves, or even shoes for that matter. “I’m not staying.”

 

To be entirely honest; Victor has never known exactly what to do with Yuri, or how to handle him. As he stands just inside Victor’s doorway, he looks much younger than Victor knows he is. God, he’s only _fifteen_ , did Victor look just as prickly and sullen and fragile at fifteen? Did he look even more ready to burst and shatter? Did he look just as determined to prove something to the world, so fiercely desperate to step out from shadows not of his own choosing?

 

Yuri keeps his silence for a long time, and Victor doesn’t bother curbing a yawn. “You can crash on the couch, I’m going back to bed,” he says and watches as Yuri’s knuckles, almost hidden by the long sleeves, tighten and turn white.

 

“I heard about your wild-goose chase,” Yuri finally bites out just as Victor turns to leave.

 

Victor pauses. “You’ve all heard, I assume,” he says, because it’s true – he hasn’t been subtle about it. His Instagram was very active while in Detroit with Phichit, because Phichit is a social media guru that could probably charge absurd amounts of money for media training, and if Victor had wanted to be lowkey about it, well then. He probably shouldn’t have sought out Phichit Chulanont in the first place.

 

“You’re wasting your time.”                                                                                                                                                              

 

“Oh?” Regardless of whether or not Yuri actually has something to say, Victor does actually really want to go back to bed, and he’s considering needling Yuri just to get him to spit it out.

 

Yuri doesn’t look like he particularly wants to be here. His posture so tense he looks ready to snap at a single touch. “I told him to retire.”

 

At first, the words don’t make sense. He pauses to let the words sink in and – no, actually, the second time he thinks it over, it still doesn’t make any sense.

 

But then there’s the start of a static roar in his ears as the words semantically starts to mean something, and it feels like a punch right in the stomach. He hears his own voice crack in disbelief, as if torn right in half, all jagged edges trying to form sounds. “What?”

 

Yuri stands his ground, but he looks brittle and angry. “I told him to retire. In Sochi. He was, I don’t know, having a nervous breakdown in the bathroom and I thought – if he couldn’t handle the pressure, he shouldn’t compete, alright? So I told him to retire, because, maybe, I think, I thought it’d get him to pull it together.”

 

Victor doesn’t think it’s ever been this much of a hardship to just _breathe_. “Oh my god, Yuri, what did you _do_?”

 

“I didn’t _know_! Fuck, I didn’t know he’d disappear like that, don’t you think I wish I hadn’t said it?!” His voice is a steady rise into high pitch, hysteria lining every vowel, and Victor, for yet another breathless moment, wonders what this line of thought has done to Yuri.

 

The largest part of Victor is shocked, rocked to the core. “I can’t _believe_ you would – ”

 

“Don’t tell me!” Yuri shouts, then visibly reins himself in, looks to the side. “I know, okay? I messed up. I know I did, you don’t – don’t tell me things I already know. I didn’t _want_ him to retire.”

 

He’s not sure what it is, this feeling that is trying to consume his being as it squashes and squeezes his ribcage, but it’s something like protectiveness, he realizes. Protectiveness for this person whom he’s never even spoken to and been given an answer, directionless anger and he looks at Yuri and sees –

 

He’s quite certain he’s never seen this honest anguish before, and certainly not in someone so, so young.

 

 _Fifteen_.

 

“I _know_ I fucked it up,” Yuri says, quieter, his voice a hoarse imitation of his usual snarl. “I didn’t mean to make him disappear. I didn’t – I didn’t mean it.”

 

Oh, _Yuri_. The anger in his breast dissipates like morning dew in the sun. “You didn’t,” he says on a tired exhale. “You didn’t. I don’t know what happened to him, but _you_ didn’t do it. You’re not at fault.”

 

He can see that his words have no impact on Yuri, not right now, but he didn’t expect them to, either. Yuri is stubborn to a fault and has convinced himself that it’s his fault, and his fault alone, and he’ll have to digest it on his own, come to terms with it and move on. Whether or not he’ll ever let fully go of the guilt remains to be seen. Victor can’t do it for him.

 

“That’s all. I don’t have anything else to say to you.”

 

And Yuri turns and walks away.

 

*


	3. Chapter 3

Yakov looks as he’s always done – although Victor is slightly alarmed to note the greying hairs at his temples, the severe lines around his eyes and mouth when he clenches his jaw. Has he always looked this grey, or is it something new? Has Victor just willfully closed his eyes to it? How much did he age in between Victor’s snottiness, obliviousness and shenanigans?

 

“Only come back if you miss the ice like a fire in your bones,” Yakov grouses and Victor knows that any romantic notions are entirely accidental and should not be mentioned. In fact, avoiding any and all mentions or acknowledgement of Yakov _having_ feelings in the first place is a good basis to take as one’s starting point when conversing with him.

 

“I’m not going back,” Victor says and makes it sound like a promise without meaning to.

 

Yakov regards him, perhaps for the first time as a grown-up, if not an equal, and not like a willful, stubborn protégé. “What are you looking for?”

 

Victor wishes he knew the answer to that. As it is, he keeps silent and nurses his vodka.

 

Yakov doesn’t seem particularly surprised that he’s not getting a reply. “The ice is unforgiving,” he says eventually. “But that’s not a surprise to you, you already know that.”

 

A shrug settles on his shoulders, easier than he’d thought it ever would. He thinks of the time he stood by the rink side, watching Chris skate away and doing compulsory figures. Nothing in him had wanted to do the same – he’d wanted to step onto the ice when he thought of Yuuri Katsuki, but he’d refrained. It’d felt dishonest, somehow.

 

“How’s Yura?” he asks instead.

 

Yakov narrows his eyes. “Why?”

 

“No reason,” he says and knocks the vodka back, relishing the burn in his throat. He’s a walking, talking cliché and he’s embracing it. He might as well.

 

Yakov looks like he’s considering calling Victor on his bullshit, but he doesn’t. Barely. “He’s brutal.”

 

_On himself_ , is what Yakov carefully doesn’t say but Victor hears. Maybe Yakov knows about Yuri’s midnight visit to Victor’s apartment, maybe he doesn’t, but Victor is relieved that he’s keeping an eye on him in any case.

 

“I see,” is really all Victor can say to that, and to leave those uncharted waters in favor of other just as uncharted waters, he says, “I’m thinking of going to Japan.”

 

“In search of your lost skater?” Yakov says, but he sounds more resigned than anything else, as if Victor’s whims have become something to be tolerated, endured and then forgotten.

 

“You don’t sound very surprised,” and for someone like Victor, who thrives on being a constant, permanent surprise, it is a surprise in itself that that doesn’t upset him. “And I’m not sure you can call him _my_ skater. I just want to find out what happened. I don’t know if I’ll be welcome there.”

 

In truth, he’d asked Phichit if he thought it was a good idea, and Phichit had haltingly asked if he could get back to Victor on that. Victor supposes he’s lucky Phichit didn’t immediately tell him that it was the worst idea in the history of terrible, horrible, no good, very bad ideas.

 

“Vitya,” Yakov says, less gruff. Perhaps the vodka is softening his edges out. “A piece of advice, for free. Sometimes we search for answers we don’t really want, and when we find them, we regret it. Will you regret this?”

 

Victor is pretty sure they’re not talking about Yuuri anymore.

 

“I hope not.”

 

*

 

Victor is dozing on the couch, Makkachin firmly draped over his stomach, when his phone lights up with an incoming text.

 

Phichit: Hi!

Phichit: I know it’s been a while but

Phichit: I spoke to Yuuri’s parents

Phichit: And they told me that you could visit

Phichit: If you wanted

Phichit: If you go to Japan

You: Wow

 

So that was why Phichit had said he needed to get back to him. Victor is, despite how he thinks he should feel, quite touched. He hadn’t thought far enough that he should obviously have asked Yuuri’s family if they were alright with him coming there; his tentative plans for visiting Japan had been little more than half-baked dreamscapes, still, but it’s like everything solidifies even if his planning still needs work.

 

You: Thank you I

You: I hadn’t thought of that

Phichit: I’m sorry it took a while

Phichit: It was a little awkward

You: No no I don’t mind

You: Thank you

Phichit: Say hi to his family!

You: I will!!!

 

*

 

Victor switches off his phone and goes to Japan.

 

*

 

Hasetsu is nothing like Victor expected: so to say, Victor had had approximately zero expectations. He’s jet-lagged and travel weary from two connecting flights and a train ride, and he’s not sure what he’d thought would greet him, but a sleepy town in the middle of the night, not a single car on the streets, not a single soul in sight was… probably exactly what he expected.

 

Beside him, Makkachin boofs and nudges his damp nose against his hand, and he rests his hand gently on Makkachin’s head as he’s done a million times before.

 

“Here we are,” he tells his dog softly. His main problem right now, he thinks as he hikes up his backpack and takes hold of his luggage with one hand, Makkachin’s leash with the other, is that the only kanji he can really recognize is Yuuri’s name, and he’s never been terribly good at navigating. To be entirely honest, geography in general is not his strongest suit.

 

Not for the first time since he saw St. Petersburg shrink beneath him until it was out of sight, hidden beneath the set of clouds, he thinks it could be a gigantic mistake, all of it. He feels – like the first time stepping onto the ice with a new program not yet carved into his bones, like standing outside his mother’s closed bedroom door and not knowing if he’d be let in if he knocked. He doesn’t like being reminded of it, but there it is.

 

“No matter,” he says to no one and starts walking. Google Maps will show him the way. He has faith in technology.

 

He’s barely managed to whip out his phone (while wrestling with his luggage, backpack and Makkachin) and is about to switch it back on when he finds that Google Maps is not needed.

 

It would seem that all roads lead to Yutopia.

 

*

 

Yutopia is as deeply asleep as the rest of Hasetsu. He’s greeted by a woman who introduces herself as Mari, and Victor assumes that she’s Yuuri’s sister. She’s fluent enough in English, probably as much as Victor, and she tells him in low tones that he’s welcome to sleep in and they’ll have breakfast ready for him whenever he resurfaces.

 

“I’m sorry my parents aren’t here to greet you, but they have early mornings,” she says as she shows him to his room. She waits by the door when he walks in and when he turns back to look at her, he gets the feeling that she’s not entirely fond of him, although he doesn’t know why. Makkachin sniffs her knees and her entire body softens, and she smiles at him. “Oh, aren’t you a lovely one? Good boy.”

 

Makkachin wags his tail and accepts the compliment as is his due. Yes, he is a lovely one, _the_ loveliest one, in fact. He knows.

 

Victor makes sure to tell him every day.

 

“I’ll make sure to greet them properly tomorrow,” Victor promises. “Thank you for having me.”

 

Victor wishes with everything in his bones that she would say something like “it’s what Yuuri would have wanted,” or even something just vaguely like that, but she looks somewhat reserved when she finally says, “Sleep well, Nikiforov-san.”

 

In the morning, it all feels vaguely like a distant dream. It’s still early, his body tells him, and he’d like to sleep a few hours more, but he can hear the onsen starting to come alive. There’s the sound of footsteps wandering quietly past his room and down the stairs, voices drifting in from somewhere in the house, the sounds of a kitchen waking up.

 

Makkachin has commandeered the foot of his bed, lying over his legs, and with the sounds of the house coming to life, he stirs, stretches then gets up and trots to the door. He looks back at Victor like he’s been betrayed by the entire world because the door is closed.

 

“Spoiled,” Victor tells him when he opens the door and Makkachin pads out. He really hopes Yuuri’s parents don’t mind dogs, although the way Mari had greeted him last night had been pretty telling.

 

There’s a part of him that can’t believe that he’s here. He hadn’t thought he’d have an easy time falling asleep, but he must have, because he can’t remember more than laying down. Hasetsu. Japan. Yuuri’s childhood home. And Victor has uprooted his existence, even if just for a while, to stay here even though he has no firm grasp on the technicalities of _why_. It’s nothing more than a feeling – an insistence in the back of his mind, an itch underneath his skin, a restlessness he cannot dull in his legs and a thrumming in his hands.

 

Inhale: This is the house Yuuri grew up in.

 

Exhale: He has no business being here.

 

Occasionally, Victor is very good at deluding himself, but he knows that his obsession with Yuuri is, at least in part, a rebound for the way he left the ice.

 

Downstairs, voices are cooing, and Victor can’t help the smile on his face. At least one of them is good at making friends; not even Yakov can resist Makkachin.

 

In the kitchen he very firmly shakes the hands of Yuuri’s parents, and he knows he’s looking for signs of sadness, for heartbreak, for the absence of their son, and he feels cruel for it. Hiroko and Toshiya Katsuki show him nothing, and Victor reels a little. This culture is restrained and polite and he realizes they’re not going to show him anything they don’t want him to see. He’ll have to work for it, earn it.

 

Hiroko says something in lilting Japanese and Mari says, with barely restrained exasperation, “Mom says you’re welcome to anything you want. Please feel at home.”

 

Hiroko says something more, which Mari responds to, also in Japanese, before she turns bac to Victor, “and that there’s a rink here, too, if you want to go there. To skate.”

 

It’s not that Victor wants to skate, but the thought of a rink is always welcome, if only for sanctuary in the only place he’s ever really searched for it and found it.

 

Mari takes him there later, after breakfast and lunch, and Makkachin follows obediently. Beside him, Mari keeps her silence, but she inhales as if she wants to speak several times. Victor waits her out – patience has never been something he’s been particularly good at, but he’s finding nooks and crannies of himself he’s never known before. This search for Yuuri’s fate requires a patient hand, and he’s certain he can out-wait Mari.

 

“We had a poodle,” she says, finally. “He looked like Makkachin, only smaller.”

 

Victor had guessed some sort of dog, with the way two bowls had swiftly made an appearance that morning, but he hadn’t thought further than that. “Oh?”

 

Mari nods but doesn’t say anything else. Just like last night, Victor gets the feeling that she’s not undividedly ecstatic about his presence, but then again, she doesn’t know him and doesn’t know why some Russian skater has decided to go to their remote town, and _Victor_ doesn’t even know why, so he can’t blame her.

 

She leads him to Ice Castle Hasetsu and tells him to stay safe before beating a hasty retreat. He can’t blame her for that, either, if all it does is remind her of her brother. Ice is ice, though, and even as he watches her leave, he can feel the familiar pull towards the coldness.

 

Ice is ice, and the rink is smaller than what he’s used to. It’s well-kept and well-loved, though, he thinks as he runs a hand over the side of the rink and tries to imagine Yuuri skating here. All the hours Yuuri has spent here, beating himself up, pressing bruises into his hips, learning how to walk all over again, learned how to fall and how to breathe beauty into the pain. His feet ache in phantom pain at the thought. It’s been years on the ice and he still feels it keenly.

 

If he closes his eyes and thinks of the videos he’s seen of Yuuri skating, it’s like he can hear the music. Stunningly intricate step sequences, dizzyingly beautiful spins, the arch of Yuuri’s back so elegant.

 

When he opens his eyes, the ice is empty and the hall silent.

 

Silent, for a scuff of shoes and he turns.

 

“Hello,” she says, a woman with a kind smile. “Yuuri would absolutely die if he knew you were here.”

 

He remembers Phichit saying the same about Yuuri’s bed in Detroit. He doesn’t know how he feels about Yuuri being such a fan, but something settles in his chest at the thought. He thinks he can see it sometimes, in some of the videos, in moments, when a step or a spin look like an homage. It blooms warmly in him, but also into an ache he can’t soothe. Everything about it feels so bittersweet.

 

“I’m Yuuko,” she says. “My husband and I own the rink.”

 

“I’m Victor,” he says and she laughs.

 

“I _know_ who you are,” she’s still laughing. “Yuuri and I were big fans. We used to watch your videos a lot when we were children. You taught him to skate, in a way, I guess you could say.”

 

Which, arguably, means Yuuri taught himself. It might’ve been inspired by videos of Victor himself, but if Yuuri watched those and imitated, he’s essentially self-taught. He’d known this, peripherally, read it on occasions where Google Translate hadn’t yet given up on him, but hearing it is something entirely else. He’s flattered, he thinks, above all. It makes him both warm and fluttery; he thinks of the stunning exhibition pieces he’s watched of Yuuri, and he’s so happy he could inspire someone to move like that, but at the same time, he doesn’t understand the sadness that settles within him, deep in his stomach.

 

“He was talented,” he manages, hoarsely. He’s just met this woman, and he’s already losing it.

 

Yuuko comes to a halt beside him, folding her arms on the barrier, and she leans on it. “You _are_ here for Yuuri, right?”

 

He doesn’t see how he could possibly be here for anyone else. He nods.

 

She sighs, a frown overtaking her face. From what she says, she’s a childhood friend of Yuuri’s, and he thinks it can only be a good thing to keep being on good terms with her. “Why?”

 

Isn’t that the same question he returns to every time he’s alone with his thoughts? “I want –” he stops. What does he want? Closure? For _what_? He licks his lips, stalls for time. How does he start explaining when he doesn’t even have the answers for himself? “He deserves better than what he got,” he settles on.

 

Yuuko looks at him through eyes that seem older than she is. “I think it’s a good thing you’re here,” she says at length. “Everything’s been- it hasn’t been the same. They won’t talk to you about Yuuri, not just like that. You’ll have to earn it. Mari might not, at all. She’s protective of him.”

 

“I just want to know him,” he admits, wondering all the same why it’s a confession all on its own. It feels like it, heavy in his mouth, but honest, for once. “Is that too much to ask for?”

 

Something about this place, this town, these people inspires honesty, and he already feels more naked than he’s ever been and he’s been here for less than a day.

 

“Knowing Yuuri isn’t easy, that’s probably the first thing you should know,” she says, and it sounds too much like she’s granting him a favour.

 

“Not easy?”

 

“Complicated,” she says as if that makes it infinitely clearer, the ghost of a grin around her mouth. “Did you never meet him at competitions? I find that hard to believe.”

 

Well, it’s time to test that newfound honesty. “I’ve had some wakeup calls lately,” he says and hopes she can hear his shame. She probably can, judging by how her eyes go soft and she places a hand on his arm. “Do you know what happened to him?”

 

The smile that never seems far from her face is completely wiped off clean as she lowers her face in a bid to hide her eyes. She doesn’t say anything, but then again, she doesn’t have to. She lost a friend, a childhood friend, and she sounds so fond of him that it makes Victor ache. He wants to reach for her arm, or her hand, in the easy comfort she’d offered him, but he’s never been good at the subtle touches to ease sorrow.

 

“I’m sorry,” he offers instead, and she looks up with determination as she says: “Minako-sensei should probably be your next stop, although you might want to formulate a proper defense before you go see her.”

 

Minako-sensei. Yuuri’s ballet teacher. It would seem that Yuuri has an entire town of protectors, even when he’s not there and his fate is unknown. Perhaps especially because of that.

 

“In any case, you’re welcome here if you want to skate. Anytime.”

 

She doesn’t know that he doesn’t want to skate, not really. Not yet. When he watches videos of Yuuri, he feels the start of a pull in his bones, the way the ice can lure him with the beginning notes of a siren song, but he doesn’t feel ready for it.  It feels a little bit like heartbreak, the way he’s left the ice behind, even if it turns out that it’s only temporary. It’s like a breakup; it’s been his entire life for so long that he can’t even remember anymore the first time he stepped on the ice and fell in love.

 

God, if only he’d fallen out of love with the ice, everything would be so much easier.

 

It’s the cliché about hating something loved.

 

“Thank you,” he says because it’s really all he can say. She doesn’t know and she doesn’t need to, either. As far as she’s concerned, he’s here for Yuuri and Yuuri only, and if he has an existential crisis in the meantime, it’s not her problem.

 

*

 

(“It’s alright,” Mari says during breakfast one morning. “You can let him wander, there’ll always be someone here to keep an eye on him.”

 

Makkachin boofs as if he agrees with her; most of the time he’s a solid presence by Victor’s side, but sometimes he disappears down a hallway, meets tender hands that pet his curls away from his fluffy head, meets cooing praise. Victor can’t begrudge him that.)

 

*

 

He still doesn’t know what he’s doing here.

 

Hasetsu is lovely in the Spring colours, and Victor’s Instagram has never been as quiet as it is now. His fingers are itching to check social media, check up on his accounts, but he doesn’t. It’s probably conceited, but he’s quite sure that journalists will show up the second he starts telling the world where he is.

 

He still hasn’t switched his phone back on.

 

During the days, he wanders and tries to collect his thoughts. He practices Japanese with an app on his tablet, stumbles through the language with the fishermen in the early light of morning. He’s discouraged when the words that meet him sound nothing like what he’s learning. He drinks beer in comfortable silence with Yuuri’s father, who doesn’t really speak English.

 

During the night, he sleeps, and he’s exhausted, still.

 

One very early morning, he wakes to Makkachin scratching very lightly on the door. “No,” Victor groans even as he gets up. “You were out – ” he checks the time, “okay, a while ago. Can you wait?”

 

Makkachin tilts his head.

 

“Well then,” Victor concedes the point and lets him out. The dog seems to have a destination as he trots down the hallway, and Victor follows, curious. He’s never worried about Makkachin here, but he still hasn’t seen where Makkachin disappears to. Down the stairs, down another hallway and then a swift left.

 

Well. The kitchen.

 

How obvious. Someone talking in the kitchen, too, so both food and eager hands. Victor knocks gently on the doorframe before peering in. The clanging of something on a stove.

 

“Oh,” Mari says, surprised and probably a little bit shocked at his presence. “You’re up early.”

 

“Something smelled good,” he agrees and sees that the kitchen is already quite busy with several pots steaming. “You’re up quite early, too.” He knows the bones of the routines now, when the onsen is busy, when it’s mostly just family time. This hour is too early for either.

 

Mari looks like she wants to tell him to mind his own business, but then she just shrugs and stirs the pot. “When you can’t sleep, it’s better to just get a head start on everything else. Cooking is just one of the things that always needs to be done.”

 

Victor supposes that is true. He hasn’t lived in a house with more than himself since he lived with Yakov in his teens, and he doesn’t remember what it’s like to have chores. It’s been so long since he’s been a part of a collective, a working bee in a bigger hive.

 

Over the pot of steaming – well, Victor doesn’t actually know what it is – something, Mari looks at him, and it’s unnerving to not know why she looks at him like that, like he’s done something to her unknowingly, perhaps offended her in some way. He’s wracked his brain for answers more than once.

 

“Okay,” she says at length and gives a nod to herself. “Out of my kitchen.” She shoos him out and when he’s out, she commands, “Sit. I’ll bring tea.”

 

He sits. Makkachin stays in the kitchen, the traitor.

 

They drink green tea here and it’s always good, a little bitter in his throat, and the mug warms his hands like a light. “Thank you,” he says as she settles across from him. He’s thought this more than once since he arrived, but she appears tired. He thinks no one would have blamed any of them for not continuing their business for a while after everything with Yuuri’s disappearance, but instead, they’ve kept going.

 

“Alright, out with it. Yuuko-chan says you haven’t been skating,” she says without preamble.

 

“Mm,” he agrees. It’s not really their business.

 

“Why?”

 

It’s a minefield, he’s pretty sure. He doesn’t want to talk about it. But… he thinks if he wants them to talk to him about Yuuri, then he should probably offer something of himself, too. It might not be their business, but Yuuri isn’t really _his_ either. “I… haven’t, not really, not since I decided to take a break.”

 

She narrows her eyes very slightly. “That’s not what I asked.”

 

He wonders how he can say this when he doesn’t even know how he feels about it yet. “I haven’t wanted to. I still don’t. Not really.” How can he explain to someone who hasn’t felt the pull of the ice until it sunk its claws in their bones and hasn’t let go since? “Did Yuuri ever _not_ want to skate?”

 

She doesn’t close off immediately like he’d expected her to. Yuuri is a topic that is never breached, a word that isn’t as much as breathed in this house, but he’s here in his absence. There’s an extra chair at the table, a space around the town, a lingering look from Yuuri’s closest friends as if they expect him right there, a completely closed room down the hallway from Victor’s.

 

“It wasn’t always easy,” she allows, and then, like a marred confession, “it still isn’t.”

 

It’s the closest thing anyone inside the Katsuki household has come to acknowledging Yuuri. Victor counts it a win.

 

He trades back. “I was burnt out. I still am.”

 

She regards him before giving him a sharp nod. “You’re honest, at least. That’s good.”

 

Victor exhales, abruptly aware that he hadn’t been breathing properly. “I think all skaters fear the burn out. I didn’t realize until I said it that I didn’t want to skate next season.”

 

“Did you talk to anyone about it?”

 

No, is the short answer. The longer answer is closer to, no, I didn’t, because I didn’t realize it wasn’t supposed to feel that way until it was way too late. The longest, most honest answer is one he hasn’t formulated properly even to himself.

 

“I didn’t want to,” is what he says, and Mari nods like she understands. When she sips her tea, so does Victor.

 

“Yuuri’s favorite,” she offers.

 

He must look like a question mark, because she raises the mug a little bit. “The tea. Mom used to send it to him in Detroit in care packages. He complained all the time and said it was impossible to get proper tea in the States. Ah, he complained in a very Yuuri way, which was him just saying that he missed tea from home.”

 

He feels – grateful, at her words. Like she’s granting him this, these soft-spoken words in the early morning, in the soft light. He doesn’t know why he’s here, truly he doesn’t. He has no way of researching Yuuri’s disappearance, he has no experience with anything that isn’t crime TV shows and if he ever fooled himself into thinking he could make a difference, it’s over now.

 

He probably knew it from the start, and he thinks of the ones that humored him anyway. Chris. Phichit. Yakov. “I’m sorry, I – I don’t have a clue what I’m doing.”

 

For the first time since he arrived, Mari’s mouth moves into something that could be a smile. “That’s okay. A lot of us don’t.”

 

Something moves out of the corner of his eye, in the doorway to the kitchen, but when he turns, there’s no one but Makkachin, most likely ducking out to see if they were doing anything exciting. He returns to the kitchen.

 

Mari is still smiling that half-smile of hers. He is willing to bet she looks beautiful when she lets herself bloom into a full smile. “Phichit did say you looked a little bit like a lost duckling.”

 

Thanks, Phichit.

 

“He’s been a good friend to Yuuri,” Victor says and thinks of Phichit only looking truly genuine when talking about the shenanigans they got up to in Detroit.

 

Mari nods. “For one so phenomenally terrible at making friends, he did alright with Phichit. Or, should I say, Phichit did alright with Yuuri. I doubt Yuuri had much of a choice when it came down to it.”

 

Having met hurricane Phichit, Victor agrees. The videos he’s seen of Yuuri in interviews, it’s clear that Yuuri is pretty much the opposite of Phichit, which is probably why they worked. “He was very kind to me, even though he had no reason to.”

 

Although appearing to disagree, Mari doesn’t actually give in to it. “So you don’t know what you’re doing, yet you decide on travelling to Japan. What are you hoping to find?”

 

Again; the question he doesn’t know the answer to. He wishes he knew. What he does know is this: “I saw him skate. Yuuri. I looked up the videos of him, all I could find, and I watched them, and watched them. I don’t know how many times I watched them.”

 

Mari looks surprised; good. She didn’t expect that. She lifts her fingers, a wordless _go on_.

 

So he does.

 

“He makes me want to skate,” he admits, for the first time out loud, and it hits him like a runaway train (admittedly, a really awesome but terrifying runaway train), that he wants it. He – he doesn’t want the competitions and looking at the entirety of skating from above, from the icy top, but from the inside of it, as an equal. To maybe find the stray notes of an abandoned melody that Yuuri left behind.

 

There’s a hand resting on one of his, he realizes. Mari’s smile is soft and slightly watery. “You should go. Skate.”

 

It’s one thing, admitting to it, saying it out loud, but – he doesn’t. He feels fragile and see-through to her observant eyes and he imagines she looks like Yuuri, at least in her eyes, which is absurd, because Victor never got close enough to give ground to comparisons. It is how it is.

 

“Not yet,” he says, and he hears his own voice as a faraway thing that doesn’t sound like him at all. “I’m not ready yet.”

 

*

 

In the night during the second week of his stay in Hasetsu, he turns – rolls all the way round, ending in the position he started in. Makkachin raises his head from his rest and Victor can feel the judgment.

 

“Sorry,” he murmurs and his hand finds the top of Makkachin’s head on instinct. “Sleep, my love.”

 

Makkachin lowers his head, but Victor can feel his eyes on him in the dark.

 

There’s a restlessness in his legs, a startling feeling of need, of being drawn somewhere, and he knows with the ache of his bones where he wants to be in this moment. The town is closed down for the night, he knows this, and Ice Castle Hasetsu is closed, too, but maybe he needs to see it with his own eyes to find calm for the night.

 

He goes.

 

He’s prepared for the sight of a closed rink, but it’s open, a simple light from within. Hesitant, he presses the door open, careful with his steps. Maybe Yuuko forgot to lock up? Forgot the lights? Is still there?

 

The sound of blades on ice is a soothing sound no matter how far removed he’s ever felt from the sport. It’s a therapy all on its own, a song that plays tenderly. There’s curiosity welling in him along with a sickening dread, because somewhere deep inside him, he knows who is skating. Disbelief wars in him, but he knows and leaves rationality behind in the dust. He’s almost afraid to look, but he can’t look away.

 

Yuuri Katsuki moves across the ice with ease, dances in a triple loop, arms raised above his head, and Victor gasps. He can’t not. Yuuri is beautiful.

 

Yuuri’s eyes fly open, and Victor wishes he could say that the shock of seeing Yuuri is what makes him shatter, but it’s not.

 

As Yuuri turns and makes eye contact with Victor, there’s a moment where Victor could swear he hears a word, but then Yuuri fades transparent.

 

And then he’s simply not there.

 

“Holy shit,” Victor breathes.


	4. Chapter 4

In the morning, Victor hasn’t slept at all. He’d stayed at the rink after searching for Yuuri – he’s not entirely convinced he wasn’t hallucinating; his brain, his heart, so fiercely wanting to find him that his brain conjured a vision of him, dancing on the ice.

 

He’d walked on the ice in his shoes, feeling vaguely guilty but not guilty enough, and stopping right where he’d thought he’d seen Yuuri coming out of a beautiful double loop – the ice looked like it’d been skated on so very recently, but Victor couldn’t know for sure.

 

People don’t just _vanish_. Not like that, not like a mirage or a vision.

 

It’s like Sochi all over again, where Yuuri Katsuki walks into his hotel room and disappears so completely that there’s not even a trace left.

 

Victor walks into the skating rink and Yuuri Katsuki disappears.

 

He’d thought he’d heard the sound of skates at one point, but he’s been hearing that for years, almost like phantom sounds, his ears so used to it that he hears it even in an empty rink. He’d kept an eye on the exit for more than an hour, and the door hadn’t opened at all. The thing is – he wants to believe he’d seen Yuuri. He wants it so much he can feel it in his bones, almost _taste_ it. He just doesn’t see how. It’s not possible. He’s many things, and has been many things throughout his life, but delusional is not one he entertains very much. He likes to think he’s better than that.

 

Is his brain truly so tired now that it conjures up an image of Yuuri doing what he loved? _Loves_?

 

He’d caved and switched his phone back on; his search history is just one huge embarrassment at this point.

 

He’d tried falling asleep after he got back to the onsen, but even holding Makkachin close to his chest hadn’t calmed his racing heart and wild thoughts. He feels terrible and has a feeling that he looks exactly how he feels. It’s not a comforting thought.

 

An apparition of Yuuri Katsuki. What would his brain cook up next?

 

But… what if he hadn’t been hallucinating? What if it was real? What if he’d actually found him, only to lose him again in the space between one breath and the next?

 

Whenever he closes his eyes, he sees Yuuri fading from sight. The way his eyes had widened in what looked to be absolute terror, the brief glimpse of his face before it’d disappeared. But _god_ , the way he’d come out of that jump, the speed of his landing, the graceful way his arms had moved in the air, it’d made Victor feel like he’d been dunked underwater, running out of air. The videos he’s seen of Yuuri now, the countless repeats, do absolutely no justice to him in unfiltered motion.

 

How could he just disappear? _Had_ he disappeared? Was he a figment of Victor’s desperate imagination?

 

He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. They sting and ache, and he knows he looks terrible, it’s not just a feeling. He’s been trained all his life to look good on the ice; he knows how his body feels when it looks best. He feels _awful_.

 

Of all the crazy things he’s done since he left skating behind, this is probably the weirdest. Chasing phantoms across the ice.

 

When he finally decides to go down for some breakfast, he stops dead on the stairs.

 

It’s not like he’s been avoiding her, not really, he just hadn’t known what to say to her, despite Yuuko telling him to seek her out.

 

She’s quite beautiful in that way ballerinas are, regal and poised and she reminds him so much of Lilia with the way her eyes run over him like she can, and wants to, decimate him.

 

“Hello, Viktor Nikiforov,” Minako Okukawa says, voice pleasant but all the scarier for it. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Didn’t you sleep well?”

 

His mouth runs dry. She _knows_. He’s not entirely sure exactly what it is that she knows, but she knows something, and she knows something about _him_. He doesn’t want to go further down the stairs; it feels like he’s walking willingly to his own execution. His feet feel like lead.

 

A ghost. Could Yuuri Katsuki be a ghost?

 

Minako raises one elegant eyebrow. “Are you coming down here or shall I fetch you?” Still scarily pleasant.

 

It’s not exactly as if he has a choice.

 

The onsen is suspiciously empty except for a few scant sounds from the kitchen. Makkachin has obviously wandered off in search of cooing compliments, scratching hands or food. Possibly a combination of all three. Victor viciously envies Makkachin right now.

 

He sits on the chair she gestures at and he gets the feeling that an execution would be getting off lightly at this point.

 

“So,” Minako says, standing across the room and her body language relaxed. “ _Did_ you sleep well?”

 

“The beds are very comfortable,” he says.

 

Her eyes narrow just a fraction. “Hm.”

 

He knows she knows and she knows he knows she knows. God, his head _hurts_. The lack of sleep is not helping at all in what feels like a western style stand-off with Yuuri’s former ballet teacher.

 

“I hear ghost hunting has become quite popular,” she says as she holds her hand up to inspect her nails. “I didn’t think you’d be one, though. I thought you’d have much better things to do than hunting for the ghost of Hasetsu.”

 

It’s a test, he knows. He’s not sure how it’s a test and how he’s supposed to pass it when he doesn’t know the rules of it, but a test is just what it is. Victor hates losing.

 

“Better things? Like what? I’m retired, as you’re no doubt well aware of. Haven’t I earned a vacation by now?”

 

Her eyes narrow even further, and Victor wasn’t aware that was even possible at this point. “Vacations are normally not spent ghost hunting in ice rinks during the night. I hear beaches and sun are the standard.”

 

“I’m Russian,” he says. “Ice and winter suit me better.”

 

“Is that so?”

 

They stare at each other for a long moment. There’s the sound of pots being moved on the stove from the kitchen, and Victor desperately wishes Mari would come in here – then again, it would be two to one and Victor doesn’t like those odds, especially not when they’re Yuuri’s protectors.

 

“Why Japan, then? Why Hasetsu?”

 

Victor would love for people to stop questioning him – at least until he has figured out the answer for himself. He doesn’t have an answer, not one that will satisfy her. He doubts any answer will be good enough for her.

 

“Let me tell you a story,” she says and leans back against the wall, appearing for all the world that she’s making herself comfortable and settling in. “Once upon a time there was a great skater from Japan, who was leagues above what he thought he was. That boy had chased his dreams for so long and so intensely that he’d actually made it into the Grand Prix Final in Sochi, and he’d been so _happy_. All of Japan was so proud of him.”

 

Victor doesn’t doubt it – he’s seen the videos of his best skates. Yuuri is something else.

 

“But then, taking all the responsibility of Japan on his shoulders, he had a bad skate.”

 

She isn’t saying anything Victor doesn’t know, but the way she says it tells him everything. It happens. Bad skates happen. Yuuri had still been one of the only six skaters in the world qualifying for the Final.

 

“Did you know,” she says conversationally, her voice laced with the winter of Siberia, “that about twenty-three hours after the skater was reported missing in Sochi, I got a call so desperate for help that I wanted to kill someone?”

 

No, Victor didn’t know that.

 

“Did you know that I flew to Sochi on the first plane that would take me there? And that I decided on the spot that anyone who would ever threaten the fragile equilibrium we’d reached over the phone, would end up as a hunting trophy in my bar?”

 

The hairs on the back of his neck rise.

 

There’s a loud clatter in the kitchen. Oh great, maybe Mari has decided to join in on the bloodbath he’s sure is about to happen. Minako looks _inches_ from killing him.

 

“Minako-sensei,” a voice says from the doorway and Victor’s head whips up.

 

Yuuri Katsuki says, halfway transparent as he stands there, “It’s not his fault. He didn’t do this to me.”

 

“Yuuri,” she says, shocked.

 

“Oh my god,” Victor breathes. Beside Yuuri, Makkachin stands, looking as if he knew all along that what Victor was looking for was right here under his nose. “You’re – ”

 

What? Alive? Here? Beautiful? _Transparent_?

 

Yuuri fades even more, only the bare silhouette of him visible. “Please – don’t – ”

 

“Yuuri, you don’t have to do this,” Minako says firmly. “You don’t owe anything to _anyone_.” It sounds rehearsed, well-worn, like these are words that have been spoken often.

 

“I’m already here,” Yuuri says, gentle and soft, and he looks down to where his hand would be touching the top of Makkachin’s head, but his fingers are just slightly going _through_.

 

“ _Oh my god_ ,” Victor repeats. This can’t be happening. He is hallucinating. He must be. He _must_ be. There’s no rational explanation for this, things like this _doesn’t happen_ –

 

But as he watches, Yuuri fades into view, not quite as see-through as before, as if he’s filled up from the inside with matter. He steps forward and Victor can’t look away, wouldn’t be able to even if he tried. Yuuri looks – he looks thin and tired, frazzled and as if he hasn’t slept properly in months. He looks beautiful.

 

“I’m sorry I ran,” Yuuri says and of all things, he _bows_ to Victor.

 

Victor knows that dropping his jaw is not an attractive look for him, but he can’t help it. Yuuri is apologizing? To _him_? That’s not what makes it to his mouth. This is what his mouth goes with: “Do you know how many people are looking for you?”

 

Yuuri flinches, turning almost entirely see-through, and Minako barks sharply, “That’s enough!”

 

“I know,” Yuuri says, voice shaky. “I know, but I can’t – I _can’t_ – there’s too much – how would I even – ” and even as he stutters and tries to breathe, Victor can hear his breath going as he fades in and out of view, and Minako very quickly moves to stand in front of Yuuri, holding on to him where his shoulders would be if he was entirely solid.

 

“Yuuri, you can do this, breathe with me, okay? In – out – in – out.”

 

It doesn’t seem to be working, not at first. Victor tries not to breathe at all, tries not be present, because it seems so private, so intimate – so intrusive of him, just being here. His brain is scrambling to make any kind of sense to this. How does one just _fade_?

 

When Yuuri’s breath is somewhat stable again, still shaky, Minako sends Victor a glare that could probably send Yakov cowering. Warning received.

 

Yuuri walks to the table and sits down opposite of Victor, eyes red-rimmed and cheeks flushed, mouth raw with bitten lips. He looks much thinner than what he had been just short months ago at the Grand Prix Final, and he gently taps his fingers to the glass of water Minako brings him before he closes his hand around it.

 

“I can’t go out in public,” Yuuri says quietly. He glances up briefly. “I can’t control it.”

 

Victor thinks – emerging into the public eye after months of being unexplainedly absent, worrying the skating world, only to disappear again. Victor can’t even begin imagining how that would feel.

 

“What happened?” He glances at Minako to see her lips thinning, but she doesn’t stop him. It’s like having a chaperone.

 

Yuuri looks like he’d rather talk about literally anything else than this, and Victor aches for him; his eyes look so old and so young at the same time, body so fragile in his large shirt. “You don’t have to tell me,” he says firmly and reaches out without thinking to touch him, just rest a hand on Yuuri’s.

 

His hand lands on the table, going right through Yuuri’s.

 

They both stare at their hands. Victor quickly retracts his hand. It’d felt – _cold_.

 

He thinks: Yuuri had been skating last night, had been discovered and had left. Yuuri can go transparent but also insubstantial, he can probably slip his entire body through _walls_. Yuuri had seen him and had run away, through the rink barrier, through the walls of the building and away. And here Victor thought he’d imagined the sound of skates when Yuuri had disappeared.

 

“Can you walk through walls?”

 

Yuuri blinks. Then he, inexplicably but wonderfully, starts to laugh. He looks as surprised as Victor feels, but he doesn’t stop.

 

Victor shares a look with Minako, who looks as puzzled as Victor feels.

 

“Sorry,” Yuuri says, but he’s still chuckling. “I just, I never in a million years imagined that the first thing anyone would ask me was that.”

 

“Technically, it wasn’t the first thing I asked you, but you can’t fault me for my curiosity, I mean, it’s not every day someone runs away from you and flings himself through walls to get away.” For a moment, he’s not sure how brazen he can be with Yuuri, but Yuuri looks strangely delighted. It suits him.

 

“I am sorry for that,” Yuuri murmurs. “I – I knew you were here, but I didn’t think you’d come to the rink. You surprised me, and… I don’t do well with surprises, not anymore. I never really did, but these days I just sort of, I don’t know, lose grip of myself.”

 

“You don’t have to tell me,” Victor says again, “but what happened?”

 

“Nothing happened,” Yuuri says quickly, shooting a glance at Minako, and then looks back at Victor.

 

He doesn’t want to talk about it, and Victor is occasionally dense, brash and oblivious, but he doesn’t want to make him disappear a second time, so he lets it rest. Instead, what he says it; “So I guess your room is where Makkachin keeps disappearing into?”

 

*

 

Minako had very obviously been displeased, but Yuuri had assured her that it would be alright. Victor had clearly heard the silent threat of dismemberment, lacerations and otherwise means of bodily harm if it turned out to not be alright, but had plowed on regardless.

 

As they walk on the beach now, Yuuri seems more solid.

 

“I work in the kitchen a lot of the time,” Yuuri says and looks down at where his bare feet sink into the soft sand of the water line. “If I lose grip of myself, there’s no one to see it. I’ve cooked your dinner more than my mom has.”

 

He tries to imagine it, but can’t. “So you’re hiding, essentially.”

 

Yuuri sighs. “There’s nothing else I can do. I spent so long trying to just not panic and then I did, and I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t grip my phone or anything, and then I realized I couldn’t see myself in the mirror. It set me off again.”

 

The thought of that, of Yuuri locked in a continuous pattern of anxiety, lost and alone in his hotel room in Sochi makes Victor _ache_.

 

“Who knows you’re here? Just your family?”

 

Yuuri steps firmly into a wave, the water splashing up the legs of his trousers. “My family. Minako-sensei. Yuuko-chan, Nishigori. Most of the town has seen me from time to time. They keep me a secret even though I’ve never asked them to.”

 

An entire town of protectors. Yuuri is so loved, he doesn’t even know it. “How about Phichit?”

 

Yuuri bites his lip, but smiles when Makkachin bounds past them, splashing the water even more against their legs.

 

“Phichit knows,” Yuuri says carefully. “Although, probably not for as long as you imagine. Ciao Ciao knows because… he blamed himself _so_ much. I couldn’t do that to him, it wouldn’t be right. And Chris knows.”

 

Something plummets in his stomach and Victor stops. “Chris? Chris Giacometti? _Chris_ knows?”

 

“He – he saw me, when I was trying to leave the hotel. I wasn’t entirely solid at the time, and I wanted to avoid all the cameras, but I’d been trying to leave quietly and I sort of ended up going into his room.”

 

Victor blinks. “Through a wall?”

 

Yuuri nods. “Right through a wall. He was surprised, to put it mildly. He promised to keep it a secret. He promised to keep _me_ a secret.”

 

“Well, he kept it,” Victor says and knows he can’t keep the bitterness out of his voice. Even from him, Chris had kept silent. Chris might be his best friend, but that didn’t make Victor _Chris’s_. The thought stings until he realizes that if Yuuri had asked _him_ to keep silent, he would probably have taken his secret to the grave.

 

“He tried to, I don’t know, to _hug_ me, but he went right through me,” Yuuri continues as if he hasn’t heard Victor. There’s a hitch in his breath and Victor looks sharply at him, but he doesn’t seem like he’s going to start crying. “I think it upset him more when I started crying and he couldn’t hug me than me walking through a wall.”

 

Bitterness aside, that does sound an awful lot like Chris.

 

“You’re quite calm about it all,” Victor tries, calmly. “I mean. Everything considered.”

 

“What else can I do?” Yuuri asks on a sigh. “I can’t control it. I disappear.”

 

He falls quiet and Victor takes a moment just to look at him. He’s thin, not skinny, although he could stand to gain a little weight. He looks sad, not even just his eyes and slightly downturned mouth, but something in his entire posture speaks of countless sleepless nights and a sadness so deeply ingrained in his bones it can’t disappear as easily as Yuuri himself does. Even now, even as he appears more stable than back at the inn, he fades and firms almost with the coming and leaving waves. He doesn’t even seem to be aware of it.

 

Victor knows now how Chris felt back in Sochi, back when he couldn’t hug Yuuri to comfort him. It feels desperate and raw and like an itch in his fingers.

 

Yuuri breathes deeply and doesn’t look at Victor. “I can never go back.”

 

Something about it makes Victor so, so _sad_. Yuuri’s talent, Yuuri’s musicality, his smile and his presence, what a goddamn _waste_. “So you’ll stay here, a secret to be kept forever?”

 

Yuuri’s mouth pinches, a flush forming high on his cheekbones and he looks like he wants to be angry, but he very visibly reins it in. “What other choice do I have? I wasn’t even given the one in the first place.”

 

It’s not a slight against him, he’s quite certain of that, but it stings anyway. Victor had a choice to leave the ice behind – Yuuri didn’t. Yuuri didn’t leave the world voluntarily, but because he had to. Victor just decided on it, that he’d had enough.

 

He can’t even begin to imagine what that’s like – not even being able to return, no matter how much he’d want it.

 

“I’m sorry,” he says. It sounds hollow and not enough.

 

With pink stained on his cheeks, mouth pinched, Yuuri shakes his head but doesn’t say anything.

 

They walk on in silence all the way back to Yutopia.

 

*

 

Victor doesn’t see Yuuri again until a few days later. Aware that Yuuri could quite possibly be right next to him, pass him in the hallways, cook his meals, pass through him – Victor prefers thinking that Yuuri is just flat out old school avoiding him.

 

It’s not a nice thought, to be sure, but better than Yuuri _ignoring_ him.

 

The entire Katsuki family seems to have decided on ignoring the fact that Victor knows that Yuuri is there. Mari has cooled a few degrees (which Victor hadn’t thought was possible, given the freezing temperature there already was around her), but Victor sees it for what it is; fierce protectiveness, a deep-rooted need to see her family safe, and woe be to anyone who crosses her path. Yuuri’s parents smile at him and offer him food and shoo him to go soak, and Victor doesn’t feel like he’s deserved it.

 

He’s essentially an intruder.

 

It’s Minako that intercepts him as he walks to the rink one early evening. He’s hoping fervently that Yuuri will be there, because… he wants to see him. He can’t justify it even in his own mind, not anymore and he has no good reason to see Yuuri. He’s got what he came for, hasn’t he? He wanted to find Yuuri; find out what happened to him, if he was even alive. He got it. Yuuri’s alive, even if Victor doubts he’s well.

 

He’s alive. That’s more than the entire world thinks. That’s more than what the entire world will ever know of Yuuri.

 

The knowledge sits heavy in his stomach, an anchor he hadn’t fully realized he’d thrown.

 

He’s just opening the door to the Ice Castle when a hand shoots out from behind him and slams the door closed.

 

“Hello, Victor Nikiforov,” Minako says pleasantly.

 

Victor shivers. He finds that his survival instincts are kicking in much faster than before he went to Japan.

 

“Leave him for a little while,” she continues. “And walk with me. You wouldn’t let a lady walk on her own this late, would you?”

 

He doesn’t point out it’s still light out and she’s probably the second-most capable woman in the entire world, possibly even _tied_ with the most capable woman in the entire world. Her fingers are a vice around his wrist and she only lets go when she has him steered on a path around the rink. She’s terrifying and capable and obviously a primary defender of Yuuri.

 

“You must have questions, I’m sure.”

 

“I’d hoped to ask Yuuri,” he replies, quite certain that honesty will take him furthest with her.

 

She nods. “Yuuri doesn’t have many answers.” She says it like she’s doing him a favor. “Not even for himself. What are you hoping he can tell you?”

 

What _is_ he hoping for? “Do you know why this happened to him?”

 

“I have theories,” she allows.

 

Alright. It’s obvious to him with increasing clarity that Yuuri doesn’t want anything from him, avoids him to the point of disappearing, but Victor still stays. He remembers the videos – how Yuuri’s skating made him _feel_ for the first time in so long, how it’d felt like he was learning how to breathe all over again.

 

“Does he miss skating?”

 

Minako looks at him speculatively. “Competitively? I’m not sure. I think he misses the atmosphere despite how often it wrecked him. He could’ve been glorious, you know that, don’t you?”

 

Oh, Victor knows. Even if he hadn’t seen the videos, the seconds he saw him skate at the rink was enough. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Never seen anything or anyone like him.”

 

“He loved ballet,” she says with promise, with pride, and it reminds Victor of Lilia, of the way Lilia lifts her hand, her fingers gracefully curled around the handle of a cup, the elegant bend of her wrist and how even her breathing feels like a dance. “He’ll always be a dancer first, a skater second. Dance was his first love.”

 

Victor believes her wholeheartedly. “I wish everyone saw that.”

 

She stops, probably at his wistful tone. He can admit it’s weird for him, to appear out of thin air and talk about Yuuri like this, it’s just that he’s spent what feels like a long time being obsessed with finding out what happened, and it feels like he knows him when the truth is the exact opposite. He has a problem with obsessing; he’s like a magpie hoarding shiny treasure, he fixates and doesn’t stop until he’s exhausted himself.

 

Athletes never make it to the top without a certain dose of dangerous fixation, dedication, obsession. It’s always reining it back that’s the problem, the fine line between physical peak and physical ruin.

 

Yuuri is not going to be a passing project, Victor won’t let him become one.

 

“You need to realize something,” she says and starts walking again. “Whatever happened to him, it _did_ something to him. _To_ him, to his brain, to his heart and his self-esteem. He’s not alright, not really.” She shrugs, too casual, and he can feel her eyes on him the entire time. She continues when he doesn’t reply, “So I guess the most pressing question is this: are _you_ alright?”

 

Deep breaths with his newfound ability to do so. Something about Hasetsu lowers his guard and he thinks she can see it on him, thinning and fading like Yuuri. He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t have to.

 

They’ve looped to the entrance and she stops again. “I just want you to think about the responsibility you seem to want with Yuuri. You can still leave, you know?”

 

He swallows – god, his throat is so dry. “It’s such a _waste_.”

 

He hopes he isn’t imagining the faint stirrings of approval in her eyes when she nods. “I know.”

 

*

 

When Yuuri startles, he fades.

 

Victor startles him, Yuuri fades and then apologizes, then fades even as the pink on the bridge of his nose blooms brighter.

 

“Don’t apologize,” Victor entreats. Yuuri hadn’t been skating as much as he’d been dancing, and Victor’s presence ruined it. “Can I see it again?”

 

Yuuri is halfway present, somewhere in between solid and completely gone, but he fills out slowly, all dressed in black, as Victor tries to look as harmless as he possibly can. He’s good at getting what he wants, but he’s not sure if what he wants is what he’s going to get, because if his wishes don’t align with Yuuri’s, then he’s not sure he even _should_ want it.

 

“Which part?”

 

“Any of it,” Victor breathes and the honesty terrifies him. “Anything you want. Whatever you want to show me, I want to see.”

 

Yuuri swallows and solidifies fully. He skates away but keeps looking back, as if making sure that Victor isn’t just orchestrating an elaborate prank.

 

“Show me what you like best,” Victor says and doesn’t care the slightest that it sounds like begging to his own ears.

 

Yuuri breathes; see-through for a moment before he swings into motion. Victor had thought he’d have to ask more, to plead more, to beg more; this was _easy_.

 

But it _wasn’t_ easy, he realizes with his heart in his throat as Yuuri dances a stunning set of steps, intricate and beautiful, spins with dizzying speed and loses himself in the music he creates, and Victor swears he can hear it. He wonders if this unselfconscious dance could ever be recreated with an audience of thousands instead of just one and he has to remind his treacherous fingers to not reach for his phone.

 

He will not violate Yuuri’s trust.

 

On the ice, Yuuri glides from a delicate step sequence into a triple axel, sticks it and then he’s in a spread eagle, now he’s spinning, faster, and he’s lost there, even if this is the most solid he’s ever appeared to Victor.

 

Victor knows this skate; sure, it looks a little different, the jumps downgraded, but he’ll know this skate with his eyes closed. He can feel the movements in his bones.

 

Yuuri holds the final pose, his breath harsh and a thing of exquisite beauty.

 

Victor would clap, but his fingers are numb.

 

“How was – oh,” Yuuri says and his voice is far away even as he’s suddenly very close, and his fingers tap once, then settle very hesitantly on Victor’s cheek. “You’re crying.”

 

The shock of Yuuri – careful Yuuri with his careful, precise movements – _touching_ him, undoes him.

 

Victor doesn’t even _know_ him.

 

He’s never felt so close to anyone.

 

“Thank you,” he says even as his eyes blur.

 

*

 

The empty seat at the table and the missing presence in Yutopia fill out that night as Yuuri walks home with him, mostly transparent, and settles in by the dinner table next to Victor, mostly solid, and Yuuri’s parents say nothing.

 

Hiroko smiles and Victor has never felt so see-through.

 

He wonders if this is how Yuuri feels all the time.

 

Mari hums wrathfully under her breath as she puts food on the table with a clonk. “Nee-san,” Yuuri murmurs and Mari gives Victor the meanest stink eye he’s ever seen, and that’s saying something considering the fact that he used to share a rink with _Yuri_. He gets it, though, because if he had any right to it, he’d be protective of Yuuri, too. But he doesn’t know who he’s trying to fool, because he _is_ already feeling the urge to protect him.

 

Yuuri’s parents chatter away in Japanese and Victor gives up on following any of the conversation around him, especially when Yuuri and Mari join in, but then, slowly, he becomes aware that Yuuri is translating absentmindedly as he picks at his food.

 

Victor frowns. “Aren’t you going to eat?”

 

Mari crows and turns to her parents. Whatever she says to them sounds triumphant.

 

Yuuri fades almost entirely and it’s the first time Victor sees anything but a kind smile on Hiroko’s face as she says, very calmly, as only mothers can: “Mari.”

 

Mari throws her hands in the air and the matter is evidently dropped.

 

“I used to stress eat, often,” Yuuri confesses later when they’re the only ones left at the table. He evidently powers through even if he looks like he wants to disappear completely more than ever. “Now I mostly don’t have much of an appetite. I seem to go from one extreme to another.”

 

In figure skating, in any sport for that matter, there’s no room for being awkward about bodies. Yuuri might’ve been self-conscious about his weight, but mostly, as athletes they look at bodies and see instruments. Victor recalls Yuuri’s lean silhouette from earlier, all clad in black, and remembers that he’d thought that Yuuri’s body, as a finely tuned instrument, could handle a little more weight.

 

“Well,” Victor says. “If you’re going to keep skating, then you need to gain some weight.”

 

Yuuri looks away. “I’m not competing,” he says. “I don’t train hard anymore, either. I’m fine.”

 

“But you _are_ skating,” Victor points out. “Every day, several hours, right? Then your body needs the sustenance.”

 

“You’re the only one who’s ever told me to _gain_ weight,” Yuuri says, blinking. “I’ve had a lot of conversations about my weight, but none of them ended with me being told to eat _more_ , I don’t think.”

 

“You look good,” Victor assures him, “and you’d look good with more weight, too, but if you insist on training every day, then you need to take better care of your body.”

 

Yuuri still won’t look at him, but he does glance towards the kitchen where his parents disappeared into a while ago. When he looks up, finally, his eyes are glassy, as if he’s so very close to tears. “Skating is all I have left,” he whispers, voice hoarse.

 

Victor wonders if Yuuri realizes how brave he is.

 

He doubts it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also here's the [fanmix](https://rikke-leonhart.livejournal.com/313907.html) to go with the fic :)


	5. Chapter 5

During the following couple of days, more like a week, Victor learns one very important thing about Yuuri: the harder Victor pushes for answers, the more Yuuri pulls away. He thinks he’s been lucky so far, with Yuuri not owing him anything at all but still humoring him. Yuuri could disappear at any given moment

 

“You got on your toe,” Victor points out from the side of the rink. “Your loop. It was sloppy and you need to keep your heel down and maintain your edge.”

 

Yuuri doesn’t say anything but sets off anyway. For someone who hasn’t asked for help or advice, Yuuri tolerates Victor’s impromptu coaching very well.

 

The blade of Yuuri’s right skate stays perfectly level on the ice during his next loop. He’s sweaty and Victor can see the way his chest moves with his exhales and inhales, but other than that, he appears absolutely fine. He’s been at it for hours. Victor envies his stamina.

 

He can ask Yuuri to attempt quads, to show him his gorgeous step sequences, correct his steps and the position of his arms; he can try to get him to eat more, to smile more, to be present, but if Victor asks for anything more than that, anything personal, Yuuri backs off, closes off, becomes a wall so solid Victor has no idea how to even start on getting over it or around it. Victor can try and touch him, and his fingers go right through him.

 

“How do you feel about a quad flip?”

 

Yuuri looks at him in that way he has when his brain is doing several calculations at the same time. “Show me how to do it,” he says.

 

Victor feels like he’s been punched in the gut. He hasn’t been on the ice since he left, not properly. The only time he’s actually been there, physically, was in his attempt to catch Yuuri the first time he saw him, and then he’d been in his loafers, with no traction at all and it’d been a miracle he hadn’t just fallen sharply on his face.

 

“My skates are back at Yutopia,” he says, shrugging and hoping that Yuuri can’t hear his heart beating earthquakes against his ribcage.

 

Yuuri doesn’t seem to hear it, or if he does, he doesn’t show it. “Then I don’t really feel like falling on my ass for the rest of the day,” he says, almost absentmindedly, and he seems to just slip into compulsory figure eights. He doesn’t say more about it – not when they go back later, not when they’ve eaten lunch and Yuuri leaves with Makkachin to let Victor nap.

 

Victor can’t sleep.

 

He wonders. Yuuri doesn’t press. He owes Victor _nothing_. Victor showed up out of nowhere, pushed and prodded until Yuuri revealed himself, and still, Yuuri doesn’t resent him.

 

He wonders how Yakov is doing. Maybe going less grey since Victor is not there to stress him? Maybe he’s relieved, maybe he’s still angry enough that he won’t pick up the phone if Victor calls him? Maybe he’s neck high into wrangling Yuri into a refined young man that doesn’t hiss when one comes too close?

 

Maybe he’s realized how burned out Victor was by the end, and that he doesn’t resent him for the way he left.

 

There’s the sound of happy paws on the floor and seconds later, the lightest of scratches against the doorjamb.

 

“Wait,” Yuuri whispers from outside the door, “let’s not disturb Victor, okay? Let me check.” Victor closes his eyes just as there are two very soft knocks and then a slide of a door. “Shh, don’t wake him up, okay? Gently. Good boy.” Slow patters of paws and then the mattress dips slightly and the door slides closed again. The gentle hum of another breathing body next to his.

 

He tightens his arm around Makkachin as he lays down close, and he buries his nose in the fur. Makkachin smells like fresh air, salt water and _warm_ , like a constant companion kept so close to his heart.

 

Yuuri used to have a dog, didn’t he? Victor will have to ask him. Maybe it’s one of those topics that will make him smile gently, so softly that Victor has to restrain himself from want of touching the corners of his mouth. Maybe he’ll flinch back and fade, staunch in his refusal to answer.

 

Victor had forgotten how exhausting human interactions could be. He’d forgotten how rewarding it was.

 

Maybe he’d never learned it properly in the first place.

 

*

 

It doesn’t appear to be an entirely conscious gesture, the way Yuuri’s fingers very gently tap things once before he reaches properly for it. It’s the mug in the morning, Makkachin’s leash when he leaves for a walk on the beach, it’s his skates as he laces up and the doors as he slides them shut.

 

Victor has never been all that subtle.

 

Yuuri double taps his fingers to the knife before he picks it up and starts chopping vegetables. Victor watches, utterly fascinated. Victor can do loads of things very well, but he’s an absolute _disaster_ in a kitchen. Watching other people be ridiculously good at something is always mesmerizing. Yuuri is a chef’s boy, efficient and wholly competent at handling knives and pots and pans; clearly knows how to pack a dishwasher in the most well-organized of ways, cuts onions with dizzying speed and doesn’t shed a single tear.

 

“I put them in the freezer first,” Yuuri explains, looking baffled that this surprises Victor. Of course, Yuuri knows his way around a kitchen.

 

“Amazing,” Victor says and means it.

 

Later, he means to ask Yuuri if he wants to walk Makkachin, but he hears voices from Yuuri’s room and only one of them belongs to Yuuri. And he’s laughing.

 

“ – lots and lots of hairspray,” someone says through a tinny connection, “and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone use so many bobby pins!”

 

Yuuri laughs harder.

 

Victor pauses. He hasn’t heard Yuuri laugh, not really, not the way he’s laughing now, like he needs to pause for breath at any time but can’t stop for long enough to do it. Victor bets that if he were to look inside Yuuri’s room right now, Yuuri’s eyes would be scrunched up and his cheeks would flare with mirth and it’s _such_ a wonderful sound. Victor wants to hear it much, much more. It feels heavy and light at the same time. He wants to hear Yuuri laugh.

 

 _He_ wants to make Yuuri laugh.

 

And that’s the moment when he recognizes Phichit’s voice as he says, “And don’t think you’re off the hook either!”

 

Yuuri sputters and Victor moves closer to the doorway like a complete creep.

 

“Phichit,” Yuuri is saying, “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

 

“I have _so_ much blackmail material, you have no idea,” is Phichit’s reply, giddy and overwhelming. “Remember during my first year, with the shampoo and the whipped cream and eye-liner – ”

 

Yuuri screeches. “We agreed that never happened!”

 

“No!” Phichit laughs, gleeful, “ _you_ agreed that never happened!”

 

“No,” Yuuri insists, “ _we_ agreed, because if _that_ never happened, then that time with the bowl of grapes and the permanent marker – ”

 

“ _THAT NEVER HAPPENED!_ ” Phichit wheezes, and laughs and laughs, and Yuuri sounds like he’s trying desperately to breathe but isn’t particularly successful and Victor is still standing by the doorway like a complete and utter creep.

 

Yuuri’s laugh is so many kinds of wonderful and does things to Victor’s insides, and Victor wants to make him laugh. It’s unsettling but not surprising, he thinks as he leans against the wall next to Yuuri’s door. He’d thought, well, he didn’t know exactly what he’d thought, but maybe he’d thought the plan entailed going to Japan, finding Yuuri or not finding Yuuri, and then go home and have an existential crisis.

 

Instead he found Yuuri, and he’s staying here and has a somewhat existential crisis while realizing that the world is missing out on Yuuri’s laugh.

 

Lord help him, he’s having revelations in a hallway.

 

*

 

Very tentative, Yuuri. He talks more these past days, he isn’t so shy coming to Victor, asking him things. Not important things, but little things, like what he wants to eat (anything Yuuri will make him), if there’s anything he needs for his room (he feels a little bit like he’s moved in, thank you,) and if he likes Hasetsu so far (it doesn’t feel like he’s spent that much time exploring, to be entirely honest).

 

That last one makes Yuuri quiet and contemplative and sometimes Victor pushes.

 

“I haven’t really wanted to,” he admits and really, really hopes Yuuri is about to offer what he wants him to.

 

“I could go with you. Into town, I mean,” Yuuri finally offers, fading a little bit as he does, and all at once, it hits Victor how genuinely terrible it must be to be transparent, literally. Yuuri can’t hide how he feels, not even a little bit. If he’s sad or anxious or even the slightest bit uncomfortable, he fades from view. He’s see-through while completely visible.

 

Victor aims to make himself as safe for Yuuri as possible. “Really? I’d _love_ that!”

 

“You’ll look like a lunatic,” Yuuri warns him. “They know I’m here, but, I’m not going to just… _be_ there. You’ll look like you’re talking to yourself most of the time.”

 

Yuuri is so brave, Yuuri is his _hero_. Victor smiles and hopes it’s _blinding_. “I’m an eccentric foreigner, I’m sure there’s some wiggle room for lunacy.”

 

It comes slow, but it happens, slow as the rising sun and just as warm and promising as Yuuri’s mouth curves into a small, honest smile. As it turns out, he _does_ look like a complete nutcase as he seemingly speaks to the air around him, but he speaks anyway because he knows Yuuri is there, close to him, even if he doesn’t talk or isn’t there entirely – but he’s there when Victor stops by stalls and little stores, he’s fading into view when Victor offers a taste of ramen, and he’s a warm presence beside him when he asks for advice for what to give Yuuri’s mother.

 

He’s almost entirely solid when they go back to Yutopia. No one’s batted an eye at Yuuri fading in and out of view during the entire afternoon, and Victor is struck again by how well-loved Yuuri is here. He might have had a catastrophe of a competition in Sochi, but he’s still a hero in Hasetsu. Victor doesn’t know if Yuuri even realizes this.

 

He's lovely in the setting sun, the light making his skin glow. He’s beautiful. Victor wants to reach for him, but doesn’t, because, well, because he’s learning a lot about boundaries from Yuuri.

 

The thing is, Victor is used to being handed things. Not – not with _skating_ , because the ice is unforgiving and a cruel mistress and his body will bear the scars for the rest of his life, but things, material things, people want to give him things, it’s always been easy for him, and it has made him careless. Careless with things, with money, with people. With himself, too, to an extent.

 

It’s not an option here, not with Yuuri. A wrong move from Victor’s hand and he’s gone.

 

“So, you can walk through walls,” he says when they’re returning home.

 

Yuuri, in what appears to be a complete turnaround from his usual startled reaction, suddenly appears the most solid Victor has ever seen him. He blinks. “Um, yes?”

 

“Cool,” Victor says, the king of tact.

 

Yuuri’s lips twitch. “Why?”

 

Victor shrugs. “I’ve never seen you do it.” He knows now what Yuuri’s gentle tap against everything before he picks it up means: Yuuri is afraid that his hand will pass right through it. Victor’s hand had gone right through Yuuri’s, that first day. He’s seen Yuuri’s hand pass through Makkachin’s _head_.

 

It’s just that his brain says that just because he is transparent doesn’t mean that he’s incorporeal, too.

 

“I don’t like it,” Yuuri says and shrugs. “It feels weird, passing through things. Like, there’s resistance if I’m not being careful and what if I turn solid when I’m in the middle of a wall?”

 

Victor winces. “What does it feel like? Being invisible? Passing through things? Can you feel it?”

 

“I feel – ” Yuuri pauses and his eyes are downcast. “Cold, mostly. Like, in winter and you walk outside without a jacket, that first chill that hits your skin and you shiver? It’s like that, a little. That kind of chill. I don’t like it.”

 

Yuuri opens up to him in increments, in inches that Victor fights tooth and nail for. “Can I see it? Can I see you do it?”

 

He’s being leveled a stare that could rival the winters of Saint Petersburg. Okay, so Yuuri did just confess to not liking it and then Victor asking him to do it anyway. Well, at least he’s aware that he has no tact to speak of.

 

Yuuri licks his lips. “Only if you show me how to do a quad flip.”

 

Yuuri hasn’t asked him why he doesn’t skate and why he doesn’t even make a move to get back on the ice. He doesn’t comment on Victor giving him advice or why Victor’s eyes linger on his skates as he laces them up. He’s there, a contradictory constant even as his hands are transparent and his skates solid beneath his fingers.

 

It’s only fair and Victor knows this, but by god, he doesn’t want to. Yuuri probably sees this, because his breath hitches slightly before he says, “you don’t have to, really, I was just – ”

 

“I will,” Victor cuts him off. He doesn’t know where his voice comes from, because his throat feels like a wasteland. “I’ll show you.”

 

Yuuri looks at him like he knows what it means, but he _can’t_ , it’s impossible that he knows what this means to Victor, how much it weighs on him and claws at his throat, but Yuuri’s eyes are heavy with meaning and Victor doesn’t even feel the slightest bit smothered. He wants Yuuri to feel like this, he realizes: safe. Yuuri is not out with a hidden agenda, is not out to lure him into a trap, and above everything else, Victor knows that Yuuri doesn’t want anything from him.

 

It’s freeing. Victor was the one that showed up out of the blue and not Yuuri. Yuuri didn’t ask for him, didn’t make a play for anything, didn’t play coy, didn’t manipulate or bat his beautiful eyes. Yuuri had withdrawn from the world and Victor had been utterly unable to not attempt answering the siren song.

 

“Thank you,” Yuuri says, such simple words that mean so much when spoken like this.

 

Words mean more now, in this place where a wrong word can send Yuuri into transparency. “Let’s do it,” he decides, before he can think more on it and change his mind. He’s not going to. “Let me get my skates.”

 

He’s miscalculated, he thinks as they approach the rink and his mind is screaming at him to not do this. Yuuri is silent beside him, not pressuring him and had even stopped him on the way and told him that he’d would show him anyway, quad flip or not.

 

Victor doesn’t like feeling that he owes something.

 

He offered to go _first_.

 

Yuuri takes one look at him beside the barrier to the rink and says, “I’ll see you on the ice,” and passes _through_.

 

Even now, when Victor is the one with something to prove, Yuuri goes first.

 

On the ice, he looks stronger, less likely to disappear into thin air, and he waits, just like he promised, while Victor desperately tries to remember what it feels like to breathe. His skates are tight on his feet, digging into his ankles, and it feels distinctly strange when he hasn’t worn these in months.

 

Yuuri waits, patiently, not saying anything, but when Victor doesn’t move, he skates closer, and in a stunning piece of bravery he reaches for Victor. In the time Victor has known him, Yuuri has touched him first exactly one time: when he cried. Yuuri doesn’t touch anyone but his family and Makkachin, and even then, it’s careful, calculated and precise.

 

He reaches for Victor’s hand without double checking his solidity first, and Victor is so stunned that he doesn’t even realize that Yuuri is pulling _him_ through the barrier until he’s right there, sliding over the ice.

 

“There,” Yuuri murmurs. “Are you alright?”

 

Yes. No. “I don’t know,” he admits, the skates on his feet feeling like they belong, the ice slippery but so very right.

 

“Okay,” Yuuri promises.

 

And it is, somehow beyond anything Victor had feared, okay. He moves slowly, at first, because this coldness is as unforgiving as ever but feels warmer than anything he could’ve expected, like a warmth that blooms in his veins and opens him up slowly. Yuuri doesn’t let go of his hand, not as they make their rounds and as Victor steadily forgets why he left – he laughs as he spins and it doesn’t feel like walking on knives or of running out of time. For the first time in years, he enjoys it, remembers with his bones why he loves it.

 

He sees Yuuri’s smile, private and small, and he wraps himself up in it, a coat and a ward against the chill, and he feels the speed on his cheeks and the joy settling on his face.

 

He doesn’t realize until he’s laughing and they’re leaving the rink again, much later, that he never showed Yuuri how to land the quad flip. Yuuri, smart, beautiful Yuuri, probably realizes this but says nothing beyond his intimate smile.

 

Victor has never felt this way in his life. And because his brain had been entirely preoccupied with himself and his unsteady legs, it’s only now that it hits him:

 

“You,” he starts, voice dry, “you pulled me through the barrier. _Through_ it.”

 

Yuuri’s cheeks pink slightly, eyes determinedly dodging Victor’s. “I did,” he says. “I didn’t even know it’d work. I’ve never done that before.”

 

Victor laughs. He can’t help it – not the way it starts from his belly and feels like it booms out of his throat. It’s freeing, it’s a release, it’s a genuine wonder because _holy shit_. “So you could’ve just slammed me into the barrier.”

 

The flush on Yuuri’s skin deepens impossibly. “It sounds terrible when you put it like that,” he says primly. “It worked, didn’t it?”

 

“It did,” Victor says and knows he can’t keep the wonder out of his voice. This afternoon has felt surreal and all kinds of magical. “Is it like, a super power? You can walk through walls, you can become invisible, you can pull _other_ people through walls. Can you make them invisible, too?”

 

“I don’t know,” Yuuri admits. “I’ve never tried. I’ve never had any reason to. I can’t even control when _I_ am invisible, so why would I make other people try?” And then, as if he realizes something, horror paints itself clearly across his face. “Victor, I’m so, _so_ sorry, I could’ve lost control, and what if I’d lost it when you were halfway through the barrier? I didn’t even _think_ about that.”

 

Victor pauses. He hadn’t thought of that, but at the same time, he can’t help but just say, “it went fine, don’t apologize for something that didn’t go wrong.”

 

“But it _could_ have, it could’ve gone so wrong” Yuuri insists, and even as he says it, he fades a little from sight, and Victor reacts without thinking.

 

He clamps his fingers around Yuuri’s.

 

Yuuri stops and is abruptly completely solid again, probably from the shock. His hand is warm in Victor’s, strong and slender, and Victor knows he should let go, but he doesn’t. He wants to hold on. Yuuri gave him the gift of this afternoon, of the joy of skating, and for that, Victor will hold on, but he won’t leave Yuuri without a choice.

 

He softens his grip, but keeps hold of him, letting his thumb stroke a circle on the back of Yuuri’s hand. If Yuuri decides to pull back, Victor won’t stop him, but if Yuuri wants to stay…

 

Victor will stay, too.

 

Yuuri’s breath is quickening and as Victor looks down at their hands, he sees both their hands going blurry around the edges.

 

“Yuuri, look,” he breathes. Yuuri’s hand twitches but stays even as it trembles, and Yuuri very visibly tries to even his breaths and Victor wishes he could do it for him. “Breathe, _kotyonok_.”

 

Yuuri raises his hand, still tangled with Victor’s, and he stares at them both, as if that will make them less transparent, less intangible, but even as he does, they fade even more and his hand jerks back as if startled.

 

Against all better judgement, Victor keeps his hold on Yuuri’s fingers tight, holds on and watches as his own hand vanishes from sight. “Yuuri,” he says and realizes all over again: Yuuri’s anxiety is in direct proportion to how much of him is visible to the world at any given moment. It’s not for him to decide how much of this Yuuri is comfortable with – Yuuri who is so achingly careful with his touches and his words and his time; with his entirety, and here’s Victor who, most of the time, is too much of _everything_.

 

Victor, in an as of yet unseen moment of either utter stupidity or pure bravery, pulls Yuuri in and traps their tangled, invisible fingers between their chests as he swings his free arm around Yuuri’s neck.

 

Yuuri is tangible in his hold, if a touch too thin – just as Victor has suspected, but he couldn’t possibly have known just how Yuuri feels against him, a living, breathing body.

 

“Yuuri,” he murmurs again, the name sounds like a prayer to Victor’s ears, a benediction, “you’re fine, you’re okay, it’s alright – ” and he keeps talking, because he’s good at it, he’s good at filling the silences with words, words and more words, and Yuuri still trembles against him, until quite suddenly, he doesn’t.

 

Their fingers glide against each other until they slip away, and for a long, suspended moment, Victor holds his breath, but then both Yuuri’s arms slide around his waist and he presses his face against Victor’s shoulder. Victor is cautious when he dares letting his hands run over Yuuri’s shoulder blades that flexes like wings, the warmth of him that erupts hotly under his touch, his ribs that are slightly too prominent, but it doesn’t matter, because for the first time in what feels like years –

 

For years, for far longer than Victor is comfortable with admitting –

 

He’s holding someone that _matters_.

 

“Victor,” Yuuri mutters and Victor has to close his eyes, he simply _has_ to, there’s no choice, because if Yuuri’s name from his lips was a blessing, then Victor’s name shaped from Yuuri’s mouth is a forgiveness Victor never knew he needed.

 

“Don’t apologize,” Victor says. God knows Yuuri has nothing at all to apologize for.

 

Yuuri swallows – Victor can feel the motion of his throat – and his fingers tighten in the back of Victor’s shirt. He tucks himself in closer while Victor tries to relearn how his lungs work, and Victor’s arms have surely never felt quite this full? Yuuri is warm, not cold despite Yuuri shivering quite often, he’s a warm presence and a privilege and Victor is not used to caring for things that he himself has not personally broken.

 

“Thank you,” Yuuri whispers, voice wet and heavy, and god, how does Yuuri do this to him with such simplicity?

 

“I’m just here at the right time,” Victor tries to shrug but doesn’t want to dislodge Yuuri’s hold on him, so he’s careful as he tightens his own grip ever so slightly.

 

“Exactly,” Yuuri says. “Just that.”

 

It’s Yuuri, who is so afraid but is still here. Yuuri is so, so brave.

 

And Victor will stay if Yuuri wants him to.

 

*

 

“If the next word out of your mouth is anything like sorry, then don’t say anything,” Victor says when his door opens the tiniest bit just as he’s ready to go to bed.

 

Makkachin stands there beside Yuuri, who looks flushed and adorable in a robe that looks, to Victor’s admittedly utterly ignorant eye, very Japanese. Makkachin looks up at Yuuri and wags his tail; honestly, it’s a toss-up between rooms when trying to find the poodle, because Makkachin likes Yuuri’s company, which Victor feels is very reasonable of Makkachin.

 

Yuuri keeps silent, biting his lip, and Victor grins.

 

“If you think you were having a meltdown earlier, then you clearly haven’t shared a rink with overly emotional Russians who’s just been broken up with, and teenagers reaching the age of developing _angst_ ,” Victor says conversationally, because he can guess why Yuuri had made himself scarce after he’d tumbled away from Victor’s arms, eyes downcast. “Pfft, this was nothing.”

 

It has the desired effect of Yuuri releasing his poor, poor, bitten lower lip and he looks like he’d walk further in if prompted. Victor tries to make himself look as unassuming, harmless and inviting as possible, and then he grimaces, because Yuuri is not a wild animal.

 

Makkachin nudges gently at Yuuri’s knee before trotting inside and pushing his fluffy head into Victor’s waiting hand.

 

Maybe Yuuri will need more than just a wordless query.

 

“You can come in, if you want,” he offers. “I don’t bite.”

 

Yuuri hesitates for a moment before he comes in, but when he tries to slide the door closed, his hand goes through it, and he freezes as Victor can hear his breath catch. “Yuuri.”

 

“Sorry,” Yuuri says hoarsely. If Victor could actually see his hands, he thinks they might be shaking.

 

“Makkachin,” Victor says and flops dramatically back down on the bed as Makkachin tilts his head. “Yuuri is scared of you, you scare him, you big fluffball,” he continues and doesn’t look at Yuuri. “It’s probably because you shed everywhere – ”

 

“Don’t listen to him,” Yuuri says, suddenly quite close and Makkachin, wise, smart Makkachin, abandons Victor’s admonishments for Yuuri’s kind hands. If Victor had the choice, he’d do the same. Yuuri is on the floor and tumbles slightly back on his haunches when Makkachin decides that the best place to sit is on Yuuri’s lap and doesn’t give Yuuri much of a say in it.

 

“Oof,” Yuuri mumbles, his eyes wide and sad. “Aren’t you beautiful?”

 

They’ve been over this before, Victor thinks, and yes, Makkachin knows.

 

There’s the ghost of an inhale and then – “I used to have a dog,” Yuuri says.

 

Victor knows this; Mari had said so, and the entire Katsuki family radiates being dog people. He hasn’t dared asking Yuuri about it.

 

“He died,” Yuuri continues, fingers deep in Makkachin’s fur and he presses his face into Makkachin’s neck. Probably bolstered from the closeness they shared earlier this afternoon, Victor is moving before he’s fully aware of it, and even earlier today, he wouldn’t have had this kind of courage.

 

He kneels and folds Yuuri in, because it’s all he can do. Yuuri doesn’t fade and doesn’t turn intangible, but his breath hitches again. “What happened to him?”

 

“He – he died, just before my free skate in Sochi,” Yuuri manages even though Victor can hear the tears in his voice, how it falls wetly into Makkachin’s fur. Something like awful realization sinks in Victor’s stomach as Yuuri’s free skate plays on the back of his eyelids, vivid as ever. _God_ , he can’t even begin to imagine if he’d had to skate right after Makkachin –

 

He can’t think that thought to its natural end.

 

He _crushes_ Yuuri to him. So much grief in Yuuri’s eyes and it makes sense in that terrible way the truth sometimes does, heavy and choking and everything one doesn’t want. Yuuri had been fighting through his mourning in Sochi and then, who knows what happened to Yuuri in that hotel room he never exited by the door, but right in this moment, Victor doesn’t care. All he wants is for some of that sadness that has seeped into Yuuri’s bones to leave.

 

Yuuri is so brave.

 

“I left him,” Yuuri shivers and his voice is damp, his eyes clenched shut, “I left him when I ran away to Detroit, and I never even came back for him – I don’t deserve – _he_ deserved _better_ –”

 

Admittedly, Victor doesn’t know the minute details, but it doesn’t matter. He didn’t think he could tighten his hold any more, but he does, impossibly. “Yuuri, he was loved, he was _so_ loved, you didn’t stop loving him because you went away for training, please, you can’t do this to yourself. _Please_ don’t do this to yourself.”

 

Yuuri cries, deep, heaving sobs. He’s not a pretty crier, Victor thinks in the abstract, but there’s a tenderness to him, and Victor still thinks he’s never seen anyone quite as stunning. He understands. He feels the way the love for a pet settles deeply and he wouldn’t even have left his hotel room if it had been Makkachin.

 

“Yuuri, you’re _so_ brave, I can’t even begin to tell you just how brave you are,” Victor tries, but this makes Yuuri laugh, pitched and derisive, and he says, “Brave? I’m a coward, nothing but weak, I couldn’t even try and make Vicchan proud of me one last time – ” and his voice breaks, right in half, and Victor has a crying boy in his arms. Yuuri gives up holding on to Makkachin, who whines and presses his wet nose into Yuuri’s neck, but Yuuri’s arms are gripping Victor tighter than he’s ever been held before.

 

Distantly, Victor wonders how long it’s been since he’s had so much physical comfort, both given and received.

 

Into Yuuri’s hair, Victor tries to make his words stick: “You’re not weak,” he promises fiercely. “You’re anything _but_ , god, Yuuri, you don’t even see…” and he trails off, because he doesn’t know what he can say that Yuuri certainly hasn’t heard before from his family, from his friends, but there’s one truth he can offer Yuuri, one that Yuuri deserves above all. “You gave me courage to step back on the ice,” he admits, and he finds that the words tumble out now that he’s started. “I haven’t skated since I left, I haven’t wanted to, I haven’t as much as set foot on the ice, because it felt wrong, it was like the ice was everything wrong with me. I didn’t feel _anything_.”

 

Yuuri is still crying, Victor can feel the tremors in him, but he’s also listening.

 

“You gave me that,” Victor promises, and he feels desperate in a way, because he’s no good with crying people, but Yuuri makes him want to try. “You gave me courage. You’re not weak. You _have_ to see that. You’re more than that, you are so much more than what you think you are.”

 

Yuuri’s voice, when it comes from where he’s pressing his wet face into Victor’s neck, is shaky but holds. “You are the reason I started skating.”

 

Victor’s throat is a _desert_. “You are the reason I came back,” he says.

 

He wants to say more at the same time that he doesn’t, not in this moment that feels fragile but so important, and he holds Yuuri, closer than he had earlier. This body in his arms, this beautiful, strong person, and there’s a wet patch on his shoulder, his neck is sticky from tears, but he has Makkachin here, too, and he thinks he has all that he needs.

 

It’s an eye-opener. It’s not just Hasetsu that cracks him right open to bleeding honesty. It’s Yuuri.

 

Even as he thinks they need to talk more, they don’t, not tonight, when Yuuri has cried himself out and he’s drowsy and lethargic and probably too tired to be self-conscious, because he settles beside Victor in Victor’s bed with minimal fuss, he allows Victor’s arm slung loosely over his waist, and when Makkachin settles at his back, it’s like all the tension just seeps out of him all at once.

 

“Yuuri?” Victor whispers, and when he gets no reply but a steady breath, he exhales and presses his mouth to Yuuri’s hairline. “Good night.”

 

*

 

In the pink hours of the morning, all their extremities tangled, Yuuri is a pliant, drowsy weight in his arms, head lolling and moving with Victor’s body as he tries to revive his extremely dead right arm, because as thin as Yuuri is, he’s still a deadweight.

 

“Yuuri,” Victor whispers, “I need my arm.”

 

“Mm,” Yuuri returns. Wakefulness comes slowly to Yuuri, but Victor is watching every moment. He fears that Yuuri will retreat when he becomes aware of their close proximity, but when Yuuri’s eyes finally blink half-open, it’s only a moment of clarity before he snuffles and makes a sleepy noise at the back of his throat. He sighs and stretches slightly before settling closer, and Victor is not imagining this, is he?

 

This flutter of his heart.

 

Yuuri, safe and sound, trusting and so achingly lovely that Victor can’t describe it, is completely at ease in Victor’s bed, in Victor’s arms.

 

One of which is as soundly asleep as Yuuri is.

 

Oh well. It’s not like he needed that arm anyway.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Longer chapter this time to make up for the fact that the next one will take slightly longer, because I have no time to edit :(

Something has settled in him.

 

It feels a little bit like the proverbial puzzle piece slotting into place. Victor has never thought that that particular, overused cliché would apply to him.

 

Maybe it’s the way the ice feels welcoming to him now, how it feels like returning home and the sound of skates is a balm to his frayed self again, maybe it’s the way it doesn’t feel like every single move on the ice is a weary fight he has to face on his own every single time, or maybe it’s even the way it doesn’t feel like just a day like any other every time he wakes in the morning.

 

Maybe it’s Yuuri.

 

Victor shakes his head – he’s never been good at deluding himself and he’s a poor liar, Yakov’s been telling him that for all the years they’ve known each other. Victor thinks he’s gotten decent at pretending that he’s on top of things, if only by sheer force of denying that there’s any other choice, but he’s always been obvious to those who know him.

 

He hasn’t known Yuuri for very long, but when Yuuri looks at him, he feels as see-through as Yuuri is sometimes, like Yuuri sees _him_ , sees what he is and what he could be. And wondrously, Yuuri doesn’t leave.

 

The third time in a week Yuuri appears in his doorway before Victor goes to sleep, he dares; “You don’t have to ask every time, you’re welcome here whenever you want.”

 

Yuuri can take that as he will, but Victor has no intention of keeping him out.

 

The third time in a week, the third night Yuuri comes to him, Victor gives up pretending that there’s nothing but fondness there. The thing is that Victor never does anything by halves. He goes all in, with everything he has, and he’s been a fool to ever think that this has ever been anything different.

 

He’d simply followed the siren song of Yuuri’s skating, and when he finally found the source, he didn’t really have much of a choice.

 

He’s in love with Yuuri.

 

He never does anything by halves, and he hasn’t been in love with someone like this before, hasn’t felt this fiercely, so it’s not like he has a frame of reference for this. There’s no guidebook he can consult, no guidelines to follow, just Yuuri and his anxious, lovely, steady heart, and Victor doesn’t think he can get a better guide. There’s nothing _just_ about Yuuri, no matter what Yuuri believes of himself, and Victor is beginning to feel that that is something he should work on.

 

Chris had, at the very beginning of his obsession, implied that Yuuri was a project – he’s not. He may have started out as a mystery Victor wanted to solve, maybe he’d chased the truth with a singled-minded focus to make himself forget about the way he never felt anything real anymore, but it’s not, not any longer. He can’t pinpoint the exact moment where it became about Yuuri and not about himself.

 

It doesn’t matter.

 

What matters is Yuuri’s trust in the night, his hitched breath in the dark, how he looks at Victor over steaming bowls of katsudon.

 

“He’s eating more,” Mari says one night, translating the soft words Hiroko had offered during dinner. She’d squeezed Victor’s shoulder while Mari and Yuuri had been arguing the way only siblings do, complete with complimentary shoving and what sounded like familiar insults.

 

It’s odd, but that had sounded like glowing praise, and even if it hadn’t been meant as such, Victor feels it like that.

 

He’s not arrogant enough to believe that he’s the key to absolving any of the ghosts that cling to Yuuri’s heels every single day – he’s not even arrogant enough to believe that he can take the honor of bringing that smile to Yuuri’s face, but maybe, just maybe, he’s part of it. Maybe his presence brings Yuuri as much joy as Yuuri’s does to Victor. It’s the cliché above all other clichés; fixing someone with the power of love.

 

Victor has always been a poor man in regards to love, but in Hasetsu, here under the roof of the Katsuki family, he’s storing it up, soaking in it every day.

 

He can’t fix anything with his love, and he doesn’t even want to attempt it. His love isn’t magically making Yuuri able to control his anxiety or the way he fades from sight. There’s nothing about Yuuri that needs fixing, but he can stay here, solid when Yuuri fades and offer his warmth and presence in the night when Yuuri asks.

 

Victor has to be careful, because he doesn’t want to spook Yuuri. He’ll follow Yuuri’s lead, because this far, it hasn’t lead him astray.

 

The fourth night, Yuuri stops asking for permission when he shows up.

 

*

 

“Your mom talks about your dog a lot,” Victor says. They’ve been stretching in comfortable silence for a while, cooling down from skating and Victor had been wanting to find some ice for Yuuri’s hip and knee from where he’d fallen an astounding amount of times in a stubborn pursuit of a clean quad loop.

 

Yuuri looks up. “Huh? When?”

 

Victor shrugs. “She mentions Vicchan a lot,” he says. “And you said your dog’s name was Vicchan.”

 

Yuuri blushes deep on his nose. He’s so endearing. “Oh, no, I mean – Vicchan is her nickname for, uh, for you, actually.”

 

Distantly, he’d been aware that Hiroko had called him something other than just Victor sometimes, but in all honesty, he hadn’t realized what she’d been saying. He knows he’s grinning from the wary face Yuuri makes at him.

 

“Really? That’s, that’s so cute!”

 

Yuuri rolls his eyes, still flushed high on his cheekbones. “That’s one way of looking at it, I suppose.”

 

“So your dog was named the same as me?”

 

It shouldn’t be possible, but Yuuri blushes harder. “You know I’ve always been a fan.”

 

That’s so _cute_. Victor could melt. “You named him after me?” He thinks it’s awe that’s lodging behind his ribs. Something is happening to his heart and he’s not sure it’s healthy. It feels like it’s skip jumping in his chest.

 

Yuuri is bright red but he’s not disappearing. He would, Victor thinks, if he didn’t feel safe. So yes, he’s embarrassed, but he also feels that it’s alright. Victor could be happy with this feeling for the rest of his life. He also just wants to see if there’s more, if there’s even the slightest, miniscule, almost impossible sliver of a chance for more, or he will back off and stay forever happy just being in orbit around Yuuri’s sun.

 

Yuuri laces his shoes and stretches. “What do you want to do today?”

 

It’s the casual expectation that they’re spending the day together that makes Victor’s face hurt from smiling, and if his heart isn’t skip jumping, it must be _tapdancing_. He wonders if Yuuri can hear it.

 

Summer is almost upon them and the days are getting longer and warmer. Victor’s Japanese is still atrocious, but Yuuri helps him, corrects him and only laughs when Victor mangles something spectacularly badly. Victor laughs when Yuuri tries to wrap his mouth around Russian words, but Yuuri shoves him back playfully.

 

The retreats come less often – Victor can prod, gently and carefully, and sometimes harder. Sometimes it pays off, sometimes Yuuri does a turtle-like maneuver and withdraws, and it’s honestly touch and go most of the time. One day he goes with Yuuri to Minako’s studio and he brushes up on his ballet for the first time in a long time, as Yuuri metaphorically leaves him to bite the dust.

 

Minako seems perpetually amused and gleeful at Victor’s suffering, but Yuuri’s flushed, excited smile is reward enough. While Victor catches his breath by the wall, gliding down to sit, Minako puts Yuuri through his paces, and Victor is not a monk. Yuuri is beautiful on an everyday basis, but when he moves, he becomes _extraordinary_. If only Yuuri’s self-esteem followed the extent of his abilities, he’d be an unstoppable force, but it’s not as easy as that.

 

If Yuuri had the confidence to match his beautiful body, Victor wouldn’t stand a chance. He already doesn’t, because, _Jesus_ , Yuuri looks fantastic, all graceful movements, the lean, toned lines of him make Victor’s mouth _water_. Yuuri is sometimes so out of the blue sensual that Victor feels like he’s knocked sideways, breathless underwater.

 

And sometimes, _sometimes_ , Yuuri’s eyes drop to Victor’s lips and Victor has to stop himself from leaning in, physically restrain himself from catching fire. It’s Yuuri’s choice, it’ll always be Yuuri’s choice, but sometimes it’s difficult to remember.

 

And the past – what has he been here now? Almost two months? – Victor has learned a lot about Yuuri, a lot about his temper and that he has an absolutely infuriating tendency to run hot and cold on him. It’s odd that even when Yuuri displays his less flattering traits, it somehow makes him _more_ attractive to Victor, maybe because it makes him more real, more human, that he’s not a caricature Victor chased across the world.

 

When Yuuri smiles at him in the mirror, Victor feels his heart catch and stutter. If he hadn’t been through physicals monthly for years, he’d think there was something wrong with his heart, but this is new, and it’s all Yuuri.

 

If this is love, then he wants it to consume him.

 

He will make himself as safe as possible so if Yuuri wants it, he’ll be waiting.

 

*

 

“Hello,” Victor offers when the silence between him and the screen has been a touch or two too long.

 

Through the Skype connection, Chris blinks. “Long time no see,” he says back, careful.

 

There are a lot of things Victor wants to say to Chris, but he doesn’t know how to say them and not come across as a petulant teenager in the process, and because he doesn’t know what else he can say before he spills open and says everything, he just keeps everything in instead.

 

“So,” Chris says, finally. He looks tired, probably smack dab in the middle of preparing for the next season. Victor thinks he should probably feel like he should be preparing, too, but he doesn’t. “I assume you’re staying in Japan because you found Yuuri.”

 

Victor nods. “Yes.”

 

“And?”

 

Victor raises an eyebrow. He does want to talk to Chris, it’s true, but he’s not going to make it that easy. He’s never said he was above pettiness. “And what?”

 

“Victor, damn it, it’s like pulling teeth, you’re killing me,” Chris says and sighs. “I’m sorry, alright? I did what I had to do, and I’d do it again, but I’m still sorry.”

 

“No,” Victor murmurs. “You’re not. But that’s okay, too.”

 

Chris narrows his eyes. “It’s okay?”

 

“I understand,” Victor promises. It still stings that Chris didn’t tell him, that Chris withheld information from him that he could’ve used, but now that he’s here and that he’s closer to Yuuri than he’d ever expected, understanding settles in him with alarming clarity. It’s about Yuuri’s trust, something he’s still in short supply of. He wouldn’t have jeopardized that either, if he’d been in that position.

 

“I’m still pissed at you,” Victor also promises, because fair’s fair. “I don’t like being lied to.”

 

Chris nods slowly. “I really am sorry. Is that okay? He asked me not to tell anyone, I didn’t expect him to disappear like that. I don’t know what I expected after he left my hotel room in Sochi, I guess I hadn’t thought it through, but… I guess he really didn’t have much of a choice, did he? I did want to tell you, I just, I mean, it wasn’t my place.”

 

Victor nods. “I get it. Still pissed.”

 

Chris seems to reach the same conclusion, because he shrugs and says, “Alright, it’s not like I expected anything else. But you did find Yuuri.”

 

Victor nods again and he tries to school his face into something resembling blankness. “I did.”

 

Chris grins as if he knows what Victor is up to. “So, tell me about your adventures. About Yuuri. He’s a real sweetheart, isn’t he?”

 

Sweetheart is not a word Victor would apply to Yuuri, if only because he is so much _more_ than that. He’s not sure he’s got the precise words to encompass all that Yuuri is. “He’s…”

 

Chris has got that look in his eyes, that knowing one that usually is a harbinger of doom, but he also looks soft around the edges, affectionate if one only knows what to look for. “He’s special, isn’t he?”

 

Yeah, special is a good word for him, but it’s still not enough, Victor feels. He nods, because he doesn’t actually want to necessarily talk about Yuuri. Getting to know Yuuri is fantastic, but Victor’s realizing now that he has Chris almost in front of him, face to face and just about as good as it’s going to get right now, that talking to someone who knows his backstory, who’s been there through benders and hangovers and sprains and _boys_ and that time they don’t talk about in Madrid, is familiar and like pulling on a shirt he’d forgotten but still fits comfortably.

 

“I’ve been skating,” he admits and Chris looks floored. That happens rarely enough that Victor memorizes the look. “Three guesses as to who got me back.”

 

“ _Well_ ,” Chris drawls. “You have eyes and he does have a fantastic ass, no one blames you for following that wherever it goes.”

 

Victor laughs and it sounds a little bit brittle to his own ears, but at least it’s honest.

 

When he doesn’t say anything else, Chris leans forward to rest his chin in his hand. “Do you think you’ll come back to competing at some point?”

 

Always asking the questions Victor doesn’t want to answer – and he knows that if not Chris, then Yakov, Yuri, literally anyone who’s ever been involved with competitive skating at one point or another in Victor’s career. “I don’t know,” Victor admits and it’s a lessening weight on his shoulders to say it out loud.

 

He’d been isolated, skating on the ice for such a long time on his empty pinnacle. It’d been cold and hollow and he hadn’t realized just how lonely he’d been until he wasn’t anymore. “I think I’d like to come back if Yuuri came with me.”

 

Chris looks like he’s considering that. “Victor, you know it’s not that easy. He’s not going to be able to leave, not just like that, not after having been away for such a long time. Not without a damn good explanation.”

 

Victor shrugs. “I never said it was probable, just that I’d probably like it.”

 

“Victor…”

 

“Look, it’s never been about you or anyone else, you get that, right?” He’s not willing to say anything else, because for all that the world has made Victor their business, this is Victor’s business and it concerns no one but himself, and in this moment even Chris feels too much like a representation of the world he’d cut off.

 

“Alright,” Chris concedes and then he seems to shrug off the topic. He visibly switches gears. “How’s Japan? Maybe update your Instagram sometime, it’s been so quiet after you dropped off the radar.”

 

Admittedly, Victor has sort of lost track of his phone altogether. “Hm, perhaps,” he says. “You should try hot springs at some point, it’s wonderful for sore muscles.”

 

They stare at each other for a long moment before they leer in unison.

 

A smile that stays tugs on his lips. “How’s everyone?”

 

Chris’ mouth twitches into a grin and Victor knows they’ll be fine.

 

*

 

“We’re going to train,” Victor announces the next morning as Yuuri appears in t-shirt, track pants and running shoes. It’s early enough that the air is still crisp and it won’t be too hot for some time yet. Yuuri is lovely at all times, but he can be mean in the mornings. Despite their unspoken morning routine, Yuuri has by his own admission never been and will never be a morning person.

 

As it stands, Yuuri blinks slowly as if the words have to pass through the fog of sleep still shrouding his brain. “We are?”

 

“Yes,” Victor confirms.

 

Yuuri looks down at himself as if to confirm his state of dress. “I thought we already… were?”

 

Victor could _kiss_ him. He doesn’t. He smiles and says, a gamble, “We’re going to train you going through things.”

 

Quite abruptly and quite predictably, Yuuri vanishes.

 

Victor is not deterred. He beams. “See, you’re already doing it!”

 

A hand appears and shoves him and Victor tries valiantly not to let his full, beaming grin show. Yuuri isn’t even entirely there, but glares at him anyway. It’s sort of impressive.  

 

“I don’t know,” Yuuri says when he’s fully there again and they been running for a while. Victor hadn’t mentioned it again when all of Yuuri finally reappeared, and it’s only now that they’ve slowed down to a walk that Yuuri speaks. Victor had counted on the fact that Yuuri needed to think it over and hadn’t just rejected it outright.

 

“I’m not saying you should do this so you can go somewhere else, to leave this place,” Victor says carefully. “All I’m saying is, wouldn’t it be nice if you could actually control it?”

 

Yuuri looks skeptical – he knows the connection to his anxiety, there’s no way he hasn’t made the same connection that Victor has, and if Yuuri feels skeptical about it, it better be because his anxiety is great and not because his self-esteem is that frayed. Victor has a feeling it’s the latter.

 

“I don’t even know where to start,” Yuuri admits. They come to a stop by the beach and Yuuri sits, looking up at Victor like he expects him to follow suit. Oh, if only Yuuri knew there are precious few things Victor wouldn’t do for him. “I wouldn’t even know _how_.”

 

Victor sits. “We can figure it out.”

 

There’s still skepticism painted all over his expressive face, but it’s wiped clean faster than Victor expected. “Why?”

 

Victor blinks. “Why what?”

 

Yuuri fidgets and draws his knees up. “You say – you said it’s not so that I can leave, but I… I heard you talking to Chris. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, but I did. I heard you saying that you wanted to return to competing with me. I _can’t_ leave this place, you _know_ that. Victor, I can’t give you anything. I have nothing, I have nothing to offer you, not anymore, if I ever had anything in the first place.”

 

How can one person be so wrong all in one go? Because he _is_ , Yuuri is _so_ wrong. “Oh no,” Victor says, because it’s all he can. Because when he talked to Chris, that’s not what he meant. Because Yuuri is wrong and has so much to offer. Because Victor returning is not contingent on Yuuri. Because the truth is that Victor doesn’t even think he’ll want to return, even _with_ Yuuri.

 

Yuuri flinches, because Victor is a moron that never said anything else. He’d wanted to be cautious, to be kind, to be the steady rock beneath Yuuri’s tidal wave.

 

He’s out of time.

 

“I’ll take anything you’ll give me, anything you want, anything at all. You don’t have to do anything, you don’t have to give me anything,” he says, voice a touch hysterical and he can hear it, so of course Yuuri can, too. “Yuuri, you have so _much_.”

 

Yuuri’s face crumbles even as he tries to hide it behind trembling hands.

 

At one point in his life, Victor had thought that another person’s happiness wasn’t something he could be held accountable for; if his fans were frothing at the mouth whenever he smiled, good, great, his fans are the _best_ , but it’s not something he can be held directly responsible for, because he’s a poster to them.

 

He’s not used to be the reason for tears either, inadvertently or not. Hysteria, perhaps, but not tears that are real and mean something.

 

As Yuuri cries (too often, too much, entirely too many tears when Victor is involved) Victor puts this thought on like a new coat: he wants to be responsible for Yuuri. Protectiveness has never been in him, not a dominant trait by far, but he wants it so badly he can feel it itch beneath his skin.

 

Lately, it feels like all their talks end up with one or both of them crying.

 

He has to come clean no matter how insane he’ll sound, no matter how little sense it makes. He can only hope that it won’t send Yuuri running or worse, disappear for good.

 

“Yuuri, I – ” he swallows and tries to steel his spine, but god, why are these words so difficult to say? They’re like lead in his mouth, stuck behind his teeth. Who is he even trying to fool, he _knows_ why it’s so difficult.

 

Because they matter. Because they mean something.

 

They mean everything.

 

“Yuuri, look at me,” he says and wonder of wonders, Yuuri does. He raises his head and his eyes are wet, his face flush with sadness, and Victor aches. “Yuuri, I’m in love with you.”

 

And there it is. In all its simplicity, in all its encompassing terrible, naked honesty. It’s all he has and he will offer the words at Yuuri’s feet. Yuuri says he has nothing to give, but he’s wrong. If anyone in the entire world has nothing to give, it’s Victor and his poor words, but it’s all he has and it’s everything he wants to give to this person: to Yuuri, who in this world asks for so very little.

 

Yuuri’s face is a study in complexity and Victor feels his breath stutter behind his collarbones. He’s waiting for his judgment.

 

Yuuri – _breathes_. Exhales, and it sounds like he’s never taken such a breath before. He bites his abused, chewed bottom lip and lowers his face from view, and something in Victor’s chest clenches. Who cares about Victor’s meagre words and emotions when Yuuri is the common denominator for all the calculations Victor never knew he needed to do?

 

“Yuuri?”

 

The next breath is a gasp, like the first breath out of water. Yuuri licks his lips and flounders before he tries: “Victor – I – ”

 

“I don’t expect anything from you,” Victor says and is pretty certain he’s never meant words quite as much before. “You don’t owe me anything. I’m in love with you and that’s it. It’s all I have.”

 

“You make it sound so _easy_ ,” Yuuri finally says as he looks down at his wringing hands.

 

As easy as breathing, Victor thinks.

 

Yuuri looks like he’s seen a ghost. “I don’t understand,” he admits. He sounds so young. He _is_ young, Victor knows this objectively, but Yuuri’s eyes look so much older a lot of the time, his entire bearing more mature than his tender years. Now, he looks and sounds his age. Terribly confused, or in denial, but wonderfully still here. He hasn’t run, he hasn’t disappeared. It’s way more than what Victor could reasonably have hoped for.

 

“You don’t have to say anything,” Victor says, as honest as he knows how to be. “It is what it is. I’m in love with you.”

 

Yuuri is… sort of blurry around the edges now, but he’s still there. Victor wishes he could hold on to him and make him stay, but that’s not up for him to decide. If he could, he’d hold out a hand, an arm, a _leg_ , anything, to keep Yuuri from leaving, it just doesn’t work like that.

 

“I don’t understand,” Yuuri says again. “I just, I don’t see how you could – I’m just, I’m just _me_.”

 

And isn’t that so achingly vulnerable and so telling? Maybe Yuuri hasn’t been told enough times in his life to truly believe it, maybe Yuuri has spent his entire life fighting his brain, maybe Yuuri has difficulty believing he deserves every inch of goodness that comes to him, whatever it is, Victor _wants_. His fingers itch with need, his skin is alive with want for Yuuri and everything he contains; all the multitudes, it’s like Yuuri contains entire galaxies to Victor’s star systems.

 

“It’s more than enough,” Victor assures him. All the comfort in the world and Victor has always had trouble with the emotional investment in people. He’s been too attached too quickly and he turns clingy and needy; it’s no wonder a hefty amount of distance is the way to serenity for the people around him. “You’re more than enough, just the way you are.”

 

Wondrously, this time in Hasetsu with Yuuri so near, Yuuri hasn’t run from him. Yuuri has clearly wanted to run from the situation, the uncomfortable conversations and the things he doesn’t want to talk about at all, but he has stayed nevertheless.

 

The laugh that leaves Yuuri’s mouth is derisive, surprised, startled, all in one. “Even though I’ll never be able to leave? That I’ll be forever stuck here as Hasetsu’s ghost?”

 

“Even then,” Victor promises.

 

Yuuri’s throat works for a moment and then he looks up, determined. “I’ll do my best to learn how to control it.”

 

Brave, brave Yuuri reaches for his hand and Victor isn’t surprised that their fingers catch and hold – he’s surprised that Yuuri doesn’t double tap first, but maybe he shouldn’t be.

 

*

 

It’s entirely too dark and still in the middle of the night when Victor wakes by a hollow thud. The space beside him is empty but still warm. “Yuuri?”

 

“Sorry,” Yuuri’s voice says, muffled and as if it’s boxed in and Victor gets up on his elbows as a rustle from beneath the bed alerts him.

 

“Yuuri?”

 

And Yuuri crawls out from underneath the bed, voice tight, “sorry, go back to sleep, don’t worry, I didn’t mean to wake you, just go back to sleep, okay? Sorry, sorry, go back to sleep, I’m sorry.”

 

Victor would really rather not. He’d thought that maybe his confession of love would have pushed Yuuri so far out of his emotional comfort zone that he’d shy away from staying in Victor’s bed, but Yuuri had still followed him that night and had settled in next to him like he’d done the nights before.

 

When Yuuri is back on the bed, Victor can practically feel the heat from his cheeks in the dark. “Are you alright?”

 

“I’m fine, go back to sleep,” Yuuri insists and turns on his side with his back to Victor. Victor can’t see him well in the dark, just the shape of him, but he still curls closer, lets his arm settle around Yuuri’s waist. He waits Yuuri out. “Sorry,” Yuuri eventually says. “I haven’t done that since I first got back here.”

 

“What, woken someone up in the middle of the night?”

 

Yuuri sighs, well aware what Victor is doing.

 

“Well, next time you decide on passing through the bed,” Victor says, satisfied that Yuuri actually talked about it and didn’t ignore it altogether, “pull me with you.”

 

Yuuri huffs a laugh.

 

*

 

“I don’t think you realize how difficult it is for me,” Yuuri says.

 

“Then _talk_ to me, Yuuri. Tell me.”

 

While Yuuri has been trying to learn control better, he’s been slipping through doors, walls, Victor, his food and on one especially memorable occasion, the floor. It was only with one foot and Yuuri was so frightened that he’d get stuck that his other foot started sinking too, before Victor yanked him back up. Frustrated with his lack of progress, it seemed like Yuuri had disregarded making progress entirely and had started just passing through everything on principle and not even trying.

 

His jaw tightening minutely, now Yuuri is apparently frustrated enough that he wants to talk about it. “It’s like I have to be hyperaware of every single molecule of me all the time, to make sure I don’t just, you know, slip through the floor.”

 

“Again,” Victor adds cheerily while Yuuri gives him a _look_. “What?”

 

Distracting Yuuri is something Victor is realizing he’s very good at. To be fair, Yuuri is very distracting all on his own to Victor, so turnabout is fair play, and if Yuuri is thinking too much, he’s much more likely to skip human, civil notions such as using doors the way doors are intended and not just slipping through.

 

“And I can’t focus when you do things like that,” Yuuri continues.

 

Victor tries his best to look innocent. “What did I do?” Oh, he knows what he did, but if he can get Yuuri to say it, it’ll be the best part of his day. Hell, possibly his _life_.

 

“You _know_ what you did,” Yuuri says as he narrows his eyes.

 

“I really don’t,” Victor sniffs. He’d possibly made to pull his shirt off only to not do it when Yuuri had yelped, his hand halfway through his phone and it had clattered to the floor. It’s nice to know, and an incredible ego boost to know Yuuri gets flustered when Victor gets undressed. Or pretends to, in any case.

 

They’ve been so close already; sleeping all entangled, no sense of personal space, limbs and breaths mingling, sharing space, running together, bathing together, training together, eating together, _crying_ together, that Yuuri getting flushed about very simple things is so very endearing. It’s also sort of a baffling contradiction: bodies. Athletes have objective views on bodies and most are used to changing around other people; trainers, rink mates, masseurs, therapists and at least a dozen more, and to be fair, when he and Yuuri go to the onsen after they’ve been skating, Yuuri is entirely fine and not blushing to the roots.

 

It’s this more blatant, deliberate undressing that gets to Yuuri. It’s comforting, in a way, to have Yuuri’s attention like this, to know that Victor’s advances aren’t entirely unwelcome despite Yuuri not having mentioned or done anything to acknowledge Victor’s confession of feelings.

 

He wants to kiss Yuuri. He _wants_. He has Yuuri’s warm cuddles during the night, he has his smiles and his crinkled, laughing eyes, his tears and frustrations and still, he wants more. He can be satisfied with less, certainly he knows he can, but he doesn’t want to settle for anything but everything. He wants everything Yuuri will give him, and it’s becoming easier to push now that Yuuri sometimes push back.

 

However, the first step _has_ to be Yuuri’s or it’s not worth anything.

 

Yuuri is as stubborn as he’s beautiful. Victor has never wanted like this before. It reaches into his gut and clenches, and Yuuri doesn’t even know. It shouldn’t be possible to be this alluring and so oblivious.

 

Yuuri doesn’t say anything when it becomes apparent that Victor isn’t going to own up to what Yuuri clearly knows is a ploy, but he still very determinedly shifts between visible and see-through.

 

Slowly, he makes progress. Or rather, it’s only slow progress to Yuuri, who holds himself to higher standards than anyone Victor has ever known, and he thinks that that is saying something considering the profession he’s chosen as his life, the profession _they’ve_ chosen as their lives.

 

Far too many of their conversations still end up with Yuuri either withdrawing or being near tears. God knows Yuuri is not as fragile as Yuuri himself believes at any given time, but as long as he does believe that, Victor sees it as his duty to do silly things to make Yuuri laugh, to distract him with anything at all so Yuuri forgets himself. It’s most effective to use his body, Victor has found.

 

It's always something that sends pleasure curling deeply within to find Yuuri’s eyes on him.

 

However, Yuuri _does_ make progress, and faster at that than Victor believes he himself would have if faced with the same threat of invisibility. However, fast isn’t fast enough for Yuuri and Victor would love if he could stop Yuuri, hold him and tell him it’s good enough, that there’s no need to rush, but more and more, there’s a frantic light in his eyes, as if he’s racing to meet a deadline that’s only been set for him. It’s infuriating at times, but more than anything else, it makes him feel _real_.

 

Despite Hasetsu, everything and everyone in it, feeling like a distant dream, numbed on the surface and unreal beneath it, it’s still the most real Victor has felt in years.

 

He doesn’t know what happened to Yuuri in Sochi that made him into everything he is now, but he’s coming to realize that it doesn’t matter.

 

The sheer scope of logistics sends Victor’s brain into overdrive on a normal day, but trying to think about what to do with Yuuri is a short-circuiting endeavor. At night, holding Yuuri close and feeling the puffs of breath on his neck, the slight, unconscious twitch of fingers in fabric or on his arms or fingers or waist, he thinks about reintroducing Yuuri to the world. What could he possibly say? That Yuuri had been abducted and Victor saved him? That Yuuri had been the victim of a crime and held for ransom? That he’d just wanted a break but now, armed with the force of Victor’s love as a shield, he was ready for the world again? There’s literally nothing in the world that Victor can offer that will allow Yuuri to seamlessly go back into the world.

 

Moreover, it’s not even likely that Yuuri wants it.

 

But even if he doesn’t want it, the days pass, into weeks and Yuuri slowly doesn’t lose his feeble grip on glasses and bowls and chopsticks. He doesn’t pass through the barrier of the rink but goes sheer with embarrassment when he smacks into a door when expecting to pass through it.

 

Victor tries to be happy – he _is_ , embarrassingly so, for Yuuri and his progress, but thinking that everything he does here; everything Yuuri manages and accomplishes will have to stay here hurts. There’s no chance of Yuuri leaving here, it’s simply been too long without a plausible explanation for his disappearance. If Yuuri resurfaced he’d be faced with so much scrutiny, so much attention, so many questions and so much invasion of his privacy that Yuuri would most likely disappear entirely to never return again.

 

It’s a risk Victor can’t run. He doesn’t want that, he doesn’t Yuuri to disappear, oh gods, it’s the very last thing he wants and the thought alone has him desperately and fiercely clutching Makkachin for comfort in the night when Yuuri has curved away.

 

But despite everything, under Victor’s attention, Mari’s teasing and protectiveness, Yuuri _blooms_.

 

It’s the only word Victor can find that fits for it, and he hopes and thinks he isn’t imagining it when Mari and Yuuri’s parents look approving. Victor will stoop very low in order to justify himself; he knows this and tries to avoid putting himself into situations where he will do anything to reason with himself, but he truly believes that this is something he’s doing right. For everything stupid he’s ever done, and the list is as long as his arm, probably both his arms and then some more, he thinks that this is the one thing he will try his best for the rest of his life to be right with.

 

Yuuri deserves that and so much more.

 

One night he wakes and the back of Yuuri’s fingers are tracing over his cheeks, and he whispers brokenly; “Oh, Victor,” and nothing else.

 

On the ice, Victor lands a quad flip and Yuuri gets stars in his eyes, and Victor isn’t even trying to not be conceited at this point. Yuuri looks like Victor feels most days; overwhelmed, blown away, completely infatuated and in awe, and still Victor doesn’t want to assume.

 

“That was amazing,” Yuuri breathes, his hand only passing slightly through the barrier of the rink when he stands there. He’s sweaty and adorable and so hot, and Victor want to lick his neck. He shows remarkable self-restraint and doesn’t, but it’s a near thing. “You’re amazing.”

 

Compliments are something Victor is intimately acquainted with, but Yuuri’s words are sincere in a way the world hasn’t felt in years. It’s easy now, to look back and realize and recognize his mindset for years, but now he has the distance and time to settle the score.

 

“Another,” Victor says and Yuuri responds by skating back to the start of his step sequence, and Victor loses his breath all over again.

 

Yuuri owes Victor nothing at all.

 

That doesn’t mean that Victor doesn’t want everything Yuuri will give him.

 

*

 

“Yuri sent me a video,” Victor says as he looks at his phone. He’d picked it up and scrolled through Instagram, realizing all over again that the world just rotates without his participation and he’s not even bothered. His fans are noisy and thinking up weird conspiracy theories that he’s possibly vacationing with Elvis at this point and that’s why his Instagram and general online presence is as good as dead. “Want to watch with me?”

 

“Plisetsky?” Yuuri asks, sounding and looking wary, and Victor remembers Yuri’s confession before Victor left for Japan, how he’d found Yuuri in the bathroom and told him to retire.

 

“He’s sorry, by the way,” Victor says in lieu of a proper confirmation, because he’s quite sure Yuuri already knows the answer. “He’s a teenager. It’s not an excuse, but it’s a reason. He said he was a dick to you and that he’s sorry.”

 

Yuuri looks like he finds that hard to believe, but he does nod eventually. “It wasn’t his fault,” he says at length and that, Victor supposes, is all that needs to be said about that. “He found me just as I’d found out about Vicchan. He couldn’t possibly have known.”

 

It looks like Yuuri wants to say more, but he doesn’t as he settles cross-legged next to Victor on the bed. Victor presses play and they watch as the Yuri in the video skates half a program, swivels gracefully and then when Yakov yells something, he launches spitefully into a set of jumps that are technically perfect, but –

 

“He’s so angry,” Yuuri murmurs. “He can’t hide that.”

 

Victor agrees, but telling Yuri that will never go over well, and to be quite honest, it took Victor a lot longer to pinpoint what exactly was off about Yuri’s skating. Perhaps it’s easier for Yuuri who _feels_ so much and so honestly on the ice, to gauge what is needed in expressiveness. Victor has never seen anyone with the kind of presentation scores Yuuri regularly harvested from competitions, even when the technical aspect turned into Yuuri’s nightmare.

 

It’s not just that Victor is in love with Yuuri and biased to the point of no return, because his admiration for Yuuri’s skating came before Victor really knew _him_.

 

“One of my rinkmates in Detroit always said I looked so sad when I skated,” Yuuri says. “I don’t think I ever was that sad when I was there, but maybe he couldn’t tell I was homesick a lot.”

 

“You were?” Victor is so charmed – it’s such an endearing trait in such a mature boy however it had felt for Yuuri. “How long were you gone?”

 

Yuuri looks away. “Five years. I didn’t really feel like I’d achieved anything, and I didn’t want to come home emptyhanded, so in the long run it just became easier to stay away.”

 

“Your family is proud of you no matter what you do, you know that, right?” Because it hurts Victor’s heart, makes it tap an aching rhythm of strange melancholy, that Yuuri is so beloved to an entire town but is utterly unaware of it.

 

“Rationally, yes,” Yuuri concedes, wetting his lips. His fingers are tightening and relaxing in minute motions, and all Victor wants is to reach for his hands and hold on.

 

For once, he engages his impulse control. Well, he doesn’t, not really, but he doesn’t reach for Yuuri’s hands, at least, though he does slip his arm around Yuuri and tugs him closer. Yuuri sort of tilts sideways and it can’t really be that comfortable, but Yuuri isn’t complaining.

 

Sometimes it feels like they’re three people in their interactions – Victor, Yuuri and Yuuri’s anxiety.

 

It’s not a foreign thought to Victor: The person who stands the most in Yuuri’s way is Yuuri himself. What’s both better and worse is that Yuuri is fully aware of this; better because Yuuri knows and is therefore already one step closer to doing something, or even just making the attempt, because Victor doubts Yuuri knows how brave he is for facing the world every single day.

 

Worse, because Yuuri knows and tries to do something about it, but doesn’t see or acknowledge progress and only sees setbacks.

 

“I’m proud of you,” he says, because at this point there are such few things he hasn’t said to Yuuri already that matters. He’s already confessed the biggest words, the most honest of them, the ones he’ll never demand a response to, and so these feels pale and poor in comparison despite meaning them so much. “For all you’re doing. For all you’ve already done. You’re so brave.”

 

“Nothing happened to me,” Yuuri blurts and for a moment he looks horrified that he’s spoken. His body in Victor’s embrace goes rigid with it, but Victor is not letting go of him unless Yuuri wants him to. He folds in on himself, hunching his shoulders as if to make himself smaller. “I’m not brave, there’s nothing for you to be proud of. I haven’t done _anything_.”

 

“What do you mean? Nothing happened to you? What are you talking about?”

 

“In Sochi,” Yuuri says, still rigid and his voice strangely detached, but his body is betraying him, because he’s going blurry and Victor can feel the coldness he’s come to associate with Yuuri going intangible. “Nothing happened. _Nothing_. Nothing at all. I just… I was so upset about everything.”

 

Victor knows. “Vicchan?”

 

Yuuri shrugs, going slightly through Victor’s hold, but he stays. “ _Everything_ , but of course about Vicchan, too. I’d worked so hard to be on the same ice as you and I flubbed so hard I could be used as the prime example of what _not_ to do on the ice, and I just, I didn’t want it anymore. I was so upset and so angry at myself and I felt so helpless. I’d been so close to a panic attack all day, and I just couldn’t stave it off anymore when I got back to the hotel.”

 

He breathes in and it’s a shuddery thing. “I don’t know how long I was in there. I…”

 

“You don’t have to tell me, Yuuri, you don’t need to explain anything,” Victor tries, but Yuuri isn’t listening, not really. His eyes are huge and glassy, his body not all there in Victor’s embrace.

 

“I really don’t know how much time went by, but I was so _tired_. It was like, like, like I was moving through water, like I couldn’t move faster even if I tried. I just felt like such a disappointment. To everyone, to my parents, to my friends, to Ciao Ciao and everyone I’d ever met and that had wished me all their best. I represented my country and I failed. I _failed_.”

 

There’s a note of urgency in Yuuri’s voice that makes the hair on the back of Victor’s neck stand on end. “Yuuri, you didn’t _fail_ – ”

 

Yuuri continues, doesn’t hear him, “it felt like my heart stopped beating and I couldn’t breathe at the same time that I was hyperventilating, and I know because I could hear my own breath going off like crazy. It was like a total loss of control of my body. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t really feel my arms or my legs and that made me panic more, and then I just felt numb.”

 

It sounds a little bit like Yuuri might start hyperventilating any moment _now_ , and Victor just wants Yuuri to be okay.

 

“Breathe, Yuuri,” Victor tries and tightens his hold and only just manages to stop himself from flinching when his entire arm almost passes right through him. “Yuuri, you’re safe here, _breathe_ , okay?”

 

Yuuri angrily dashes his hand across his cheeks and Victor hadn’t even noticed the tears. “ _I_ did this to me, I’m such a coward, I’m not _brave_ , I’m not, you can’t just say that as if it’s _easy_ , I’m not who you think I am, I don’t know what kind of pedestal you’ve put me on, _nothing_ happened to me, I did it, so don’t – don’t – don’t look at me like that, like I’m, like I’m – ”

 

Victor wants to hold him so close, but he physically _can’t_. “Like you’re what, Yuuri?”

 

“Like I’m worth it! It’s like a trick, I’ve somehow tricked you into thinking you feel something for me!” Yuuri shouts and the silence that hits them both after is even louder. Yuuri’s breath is terrifyingly harsh and Victor feels so _much_ for this ridiculous, beautiful person, like his body can’t hold it anymore, and oddly, Victor also feels the beginning of a stoked ember, of slumbering anger being blown to life, and he’s helpless to it when he hisses; “Don’t tell me what to do and how to feel. Don’t you _dare_.”

 

Yuuri blinks, big tears rolling down his cheeks and if he’s fazed by Victor’s anger, he doesn’t show it. It’s like he’s retreated into his anxiety as he says very quietly, “Don’t you get it? I wanted to disappear so badly that I– I erased myself. _I_ did this to me. Nothing horrible happened to me, except for myself. And that was horrible enough.”

 

The anger drains from Victor like dew in the morning as one horrible, dawning truth cements itself so thoroughly that Victor feels shaken to his very core. It’s never been as true as it feels now, because Yuuri’s worst enemy truly is himself.

 

“I did this, how pathetic is that? I erased myself. That’s it. That’s all.”

 

Yuuri doesn’t even realize all the ways he’s incredible.

 

It breaks Victor’s heart. “Yuuri, you’re – ”

 

“ _Don’t_ say it,” Yuuri begs, voice broken, but Victor continues:

 

“- so, so _brave_.”

 

And Yuuri, in all his horror, vanishes completely from Victor’s sight and Victor’s hold, leaving his arms grappling in thin air, and for the second time since Victor laid eyes on him, he’s completely gone.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more after this, my god, I'm wordy. The [fanmix to go with the fic](https://rikke-leonhart.livejournal.com/313907.html) is still in my journal :)  
> Also oh my god, I'm terrible when it comes to responding to comments so asldlskjdjsgfakhklfsja THANK YOU A MILLION for your sweet, sweet words, you are all awesome and I appreciate every single one of you <3<3<3<3<3

Mari had taken one look at him when she’d come to check on their raised voices, had turned on her heel and left, slamming the door behind her.

 

Victor would be lying if he said he didn’t care, it’s just that he doesn’t care as much about Mari’s threats of dismemberment as he cares about just wanting Yuuri to be okay. Yuuri is very far from okay, Victor is learning, but at the same time, Yuuri is much more okay than Yuuri himself seems to believe.

 

It’s late and Victor doesn’t know what to do with it all, with any of it. Yuuri could be anywhere. He could have disappeared with intent to stay hidden for a long time. He could’ve gone invisible against his will, if he’d lost control, and maybe he couldn’t turn back.

 

All of it is making Victor’s head and heart hurt.

 

He’s restless and he doesn’t want to stay in the house when he doesn’t know if Yuuri will return (he _has_ to, it’s not an option otherwise) or where he is and if there’s even the slightest thing he can do to make it happen faster. He also feels guilty, because even if he does feel he’s (somewhat) right about it, nothing gave him the right to say things he knew Yuuri wasn’t ready to accept or to even just listen to.

 

But Yuuri said things, too. He had no right to tell Victor how to feel, either, and Victor bristles at that.

 

They’re both messes, in all honesty, and it’s probably about time Victor stopped pretending to be the least messed up of the two of them. Just because their issues are incomparable doesn’t make them more or less potent. If he’s trying this honesty thing and stays committed to it, then he should be able to admit that he’s been fighting depression for a lot longer than he’s entirely comfortable thinking about.

 

Yuuri gave him that, the space and the time and the courage, but Yuuri is not ready to hear that and Victor was wrong to force it on him. Victor sometimes forgets that words are not harmless just because he’s developed a thicker skin than most against them. He really should have known better.

 

Doesn’t he know Yuuri better now?

 

Doesn’t he know _himself_ better now?

 

Hasetsu exists on its own level, in a bubble outside of time and the real world, or so it very much feels like, and Victor has willingly isolated himself for years already. This rural town in backwater Japan (Yuuri’s fond, wry words, not his) is a different kind of self-imposed isolation, one that warms him and cushions him and doesn’t hurt when he contemplates leaving. Not in that sense, in any case. Leaving Hasetsu would mean leaving Yuuri and that hurts in an entirely different way.

 

 

It’s for the sake of giving away his pretenses that he brings his skates with him even as he brings Makkachin with him to the beach.

 

“Hi,” Victor mutters to himself. “I’m Victor and I might have a depression,” he tries and the words are heavy in his mouth but true, and more importantly, they feel _real_. Perhaps if the words were lighter he wouldn’t feel so much all the time. It’s as if he traded being entirely numb to the world in favor of feeling entirely too much all the time, and maybe that’s all Yuuri. Victor, numb and used to the brunt of the world, and Yuuri, so sensitive and feeling so much at every minute of every day.

 

Maybe they exist in this odd seesaw of equilibrium, where the immediate causatum hinges on the precarious balance they keep between them.

 

The sand beneath his feet is still somewhat warm from the blaring sun of the day. He scuffs his feet and takes off his shoes and he smiles slightly as Makkachin runs ahead.

 

There’s no doubt about it, he thinks as he watches Makkachin run along the silver beach, courtesy of the moonlight. No doubt in his mind at all: no matter how much and how deep his self-imposed soul-search has been, he wouldn’t have made it this far without Yuuri. Perhaps, left to his own devices in his stuffy apartment in Saint Petersburg, he’d have made it outside if only because Makkachin deserves so much better, but he wouldn’t have done it for himself.

 

Here, he rises with the sun and he closes his eyes when the sunlight hits his face, and when he looks at himself in the mirror, he doesn’t shy away from the reflection. It’d been an eye-opener to look at himself and realize that he looked well, that he had a healthy flush to his cheeks and the gauntness that had haunted his every press picture for years before photoshop happened, were long gone.

 

And he didn’t even notice when it happened.

 

Well, he amends. He knows the general timeframe for when it happened and he also knows the cause, because even if the anonymity of this sleepy town has been good for him; even if his decision to shirk any and all social media had shaken some of the pressure of performing; even if stepping away from the ice had hurt, it had hurt more to _stay_.

 

All of it wouldn’t have made as much of and as quick a change in him as Yuuri’s mere presence has forced him to.

 

He’s never felt this before – yes, he’s in love, breathless, overwhelming, _terrifying_ love, but it’s so much more. He cares for Yuuri and even if Yuuri never returns the sentiment, if he won’t or if he can’t, even if Yuuri wants to but isn’t ready or won’t ever be, it doesn’t change the fact that Victor will still care. He wants Yuuri to be happy.

 

All his life, all of his active career has been about him and his want for attention, and if not him, then at least the sponsors, but it has never been about a specific _someone else_. He’s never wanted like this.

 

Yuuri is special. Different. Kind and funny and dedicated and with a stubborn streak a mile wide, and Victor wishes Yuuri could see himself the way Victor sees him. Yuuri isn’t a mirror of him, and thank whoever deity listening for _that_ , but there are certain qualities in Yuuri that Victor recognizes, because it calls to him. Perhaps Yuuri’s severe dislike of losing doesn’t rival his own as much as it surpasses it.

 

It’s just that Yuuri is so much more than what he thinks he is.

 

For now, though, Victor knows he should back off. Brooking his tongue and staying his hand has never been his forte, but for Yuuri, he will do his best.

 

And perhaps more importantly: for himself, he will do his best.

 

He deserves that, too.

 

*

 

Despite bringing his skates with him, he didn’t go to the Ice Castle last night. Quite frankly, he’d been too tired and certainly not interested in bringing about an injury because of lack of focus and energy and it wouldn’t help either of them in the long run.

 

Yuuri still hasn’t come back when the morning breaks, but if he was being entirely honest about it, he hadn’t expected him to, either. He’d hoped, but he hadn’t dared expect it.

 

In the kitchen, life goes on. Yuuri’s mother is puttering about in the kitchen, starting business up for the day, and the smile she offers him when he gets there is open and kind.

 

“Good morning,” she says and nudges him to the table with a gentle elbow and there are only a few moments of inaction on his part before breakfast is placed in front of him. Victor has never before thought of rice as typical breakfast food, but now he thinks he might want it for the rest of his life.

 

“Thank you,” he says and knows he sounds as subdued as he feels.

 

She smiles at him, pats his cheek in a way only mothers can do without being condescending. “Yuuri will come to you when he’s ready.” She adds something more in Japanese and Victor doesn’t understand a single thing about it, but she presses her hand to his cheek again and he doesn’t feel mothered or annoyed. All he feels is an overwhelming sense of belonging, of having been incorporated into Yuuri’s family without stipulations or conditions. He’s learning so many shades of grateful lately.

 

If she knew what he’d said to her son last night, perhaps she wouldn’t be so kind, but then again, perhaps she would. She seems to have a sixth sense about Yuuri, so perhaps she does know. Maybe Yuuri told her, maybe she’s already spoken to him. Maybe he’d also told her that _he_ had said things to Victor.

 

It’s like the first days of knowing Yuuri was somewhere around the inn, somewhere in Hasetsu, knowing he could shimmer into existence at any time and he could be anywhere even right next to him, but Victor takes a deep breath and lets go of it. There’s no rush, not on his end, and he just hopes he didn’t push Yuuri too far. He won’t push Yuuri into accepting or understanding or even just an acknowledgment, but he can hope for it.

 

He’s no good at following, but he’ll do his very best following Yuuri’s lead in this.

 

…Mari still gives him an impressive stink-eye when he passes her on his way out to the rink. He doesn’t blame her. No one seems to believe that Yuuri is gone for good, though, and Victor figures they’d know.

 

There’s been a feeble hope in his chest, alive and kicking, that he’d find Yuuri at the rink, skating his frustrations into lines on the ice, but it’s empty when he gets there, Yuuko’s shrug the only accompaniment he gets. No matter – he’d have loved it if he’d found Yuuri, but if Yuuri isn’t ready yet, then there’s just no forcing it. What he can do, though, is distracting himself and taking back what he’d thought lost.

 

The ice.

 

Yuuri had given him that, and that is the reminder that keeps humming at the back of his brain. If it hadn’t been for Yuuri and his courage, Victor probably wouldn’t have stepped back on the ice for a lot longer than it actually took. He’ll be forever grateful for this gift.

 

So what if he’s slightly out of practice? He’s kept up most of his conditioning, if only to keep up with Yuuri and his quite frankly ridiculous stamina, but that’s not enough if he hasn’t really skated.

 

He’s not arrogant – okay, yes he _is_ arrogant at times, he’s not delusional about that aspect of his personality, not anymore at least – so he’s not arrogant _enough_ to do any jumps more difficult than triples, because he doesn’t need a head injury and acquiring one is just serving the right to gloat on a silver platter to Yakov.

 

The air in the rink is crisp and he relishes in the slight burn in his throat.

 

He hasn’t put on any music, preferring the sounds of the skates gliding across the ice, and that’s why it doesn’t take him long to realize that he’s not alone in the rink, and he doesn’t mean knowing that Yuuko is manning the front.

 

He looks up, hoping it’s Yuuri but knowing it isn’t.

 

“Hello, Victor Nikiforov,” Minako Okukawa says and the way she says his entire name still makes something sweep uncomfortably in his stomach. She doesn’t like him, that much he’s certain of, but he hopes she won’t eviscerate him as long as Yuuri doesn’t want him gone. “Seen any ghosts around today?”

 

He skates to a halt, giving her a wide berth as she stands on the other side of the barrier. “You know I haven’t.”

 

She shrugs. “Can’t hurt to ask, can it?”

 

“Is he alright?”

 

She narrows her eyes slightly. “He’s getting there.”

 

They stand there for a long, drawn out moment, assessing each other.

 

Finally, she shrugs again, the lift of her shoulders elegant. “He’s a bit dramatic at times,” she concedes. “You skaters do everything the hard way, I swear. There’s only so much of his temper I can handle in one go and then I go here to talk to you and _you’re_ skating around, sulking. I’m not even surprised anymore.”

 

Victor blinks. “Okay?”

 

“You see, when you showed up here I swear I thought I’d never see Yuuri again, not with the way he hightailed out of existence when he saw you, and I thought I’d have to kick you out of Japan on your hands and knees. High and mighty Victor Nikiforov.”

 

Well. It’s not like he didn’t suspect that, but _ouch_ all the same.

 

Minako heaves an enormous sigh. “And then you have to go and prove me wrong by actually forcing Yuuri to deal with things instead of running away from them. I admire your tenacity, at least. Well done. Tell me, why haven’t you gone to my studio? You know he’s there.”

 

Victor looks down. He supposes he _did_ know that even if he hadn’t exactly allowed himself to give it much thought. Yuuri was a dancer first, skater second, it makes sense he’d seek out sanctuary where he knows he can get it. He words his next sentence very carefully: “I’m not sure how ambushing him in his safest places would be the best course of action.”

 

Something glimmers in her eyes – maybe respect? Victor isn’t holding his breath for it.

 

“You did show up in his country, in his hometown, in his _house_ ,” she points out but the words lack ferocity. “How’s that for not ambushing him at his safest places?”

 

She’s got a point as much as she doesn’t. It’s Victor’s turn to shrug. “It’s Yuuri.”

 

It’s very telling that Yuuri’s name is apparently enough as a stand-alone explanation.

 

“You know,” Minako says at length. “Yuuri has a habit of not believing that he deserves good things. I think – ” and here she hesitates only slightly as if not certain Victor has earned it, but she continues, “I think you could be a good thing for him.”

 

Victor would like to be; his throat constricts with want. “He deserves _all_ the good things,” he rasps. If he cries, at least it’s because of an opponent just as formidable as Lilia.

 

She obviously agrees with his words and probably also about the crying. “He does even when he’s being a child about it. And _he_ is a very good thing, too.”

 

He nods, well aware of that fundamental truth. “I’ll wait,” he says. It’s as accurate as anything he could say.

 

“You make him stop running away,” Minako says, sounding impressed. “He suppresses and ignores and runs away from his problems, but you stand firmly in the way of his plans for disappearing entirely. It takes balls to uproot an entire existence and life because of _skating_ , of all things. You utterly dramatic things.”

 

“It wasn’t because of skating,” he says, surprising himself. Minako raises an eyebrow. “It wasn’t because of skating. It might have started that way, but you have to know that me coming here was all Yuuri. I noticed him because of his skating, yes, but I wanted to be here because I wanted to know _him_.”

 

This time, he knows he’s not imagining the way her eyes light up with respect, and she nods slowly before she turns to leave, apparently deciding that the conversation is over. He’s not inclined to stop her and he’s trying to force his lungs to work when she pauses by the door.

 

“You know,” she calls over her shoulder. “You deserve good things, too, Victor.”

 

And then she’s gone.

 

“Scary,” Victor whispers to himself.

 

*

 

It’s late by the time Victor decides he’s stalled long enough. His stomach tells him in no uncertain terms that skipping lunch was not appreciated, and he knows he’ll have to go beg Mari to let him into the kitchen when he gets back.

 

At Yutopia, there’s no Makkachin to greet him, and he suspects that just because Victor is good at ignoring bodily needs such as hunger, Makkachin has most likely set up camp in the kitchen.

 

He’s not wrong. But it’s not Mari manning the stove.

 

It’s Yuuri.

 

Suddenly Victor is feeling good about his chances of getting some food. Makkachin has evidently already been fed and is now asleep close to Yuuri’s feet.

 

“Hey,” Yuuri says quietly and looks up briefly from the pot he’s stirring. “Are you hungry?”

 

Victor could _kiss_ him, he really could. “Oh god, _yes_.”

 

Deft hands serve up a bowl of soup, waiting until Victor’s hands are folded around it. “Mushrooms,” Yuuri offers quietly. “Careful, it’s very hot.”

 

It looks amazing and he does his very best not to slurp. Then he tries not to moan. It’s his imagination, probably, but it’s the best soup he’s ever had. “Wow.”

 

The pink that blooms on the bridge of Yuuri’s nose is very becoming. Victor eats in silence for a few moments while he steals glances at Yuuri, who seems very carefully and deliberately absorbed in stirring, and he sets the spoon down. “Yuuri, I’m –”

 

“I’m _sorry_ ,” Yuuri interrupts and he looks up for a brief moment before looking away again. “I shouldn’t have run from you.”

 

Victor very carefully schools his face into something that isn’t a complete and utter meltdown. Yuuri shouldn’t feel like he has to apologize for this, but convincing him of that right now feels futile. Yuuri, who thinks _nothing_ happened to him. It’ll take time. “Thank you,” he says instead and means it. “And _I_ shouldn’t have pushed you. I’m sorry.”

 

Yuuri doesn’t look up, but he nods. He looks a little bit like he’s doing a run-op, only mistiming it and having to redo it several times before getting it right – as he breathes in and then sharply exhales, he suddenly relaxes all at once. Victor thinks he’s getting good at reading Yuuri’s body language, but this time, the total uncoil is a surprise, because he doesn’t look up and he doesn’t otherwise look particularly at ease.

 

Then Yuuri says, “I still don’t understand. You’re, I mean, you’re _you_ , and I’m, well, I’m _me_ , and you say you’re in love with me. Nothing in me understands that, but, uh,” and he glances up, catches Victor’s eyes and then promptly looks down again, “ _but_ , I’m trying really, really hard not to do that thing where I try to tell other people how to feel. And I’m really sorry for doing that to you, too.”

 

Well, that is a surprise. Not just that Yuuri so plainly says it, that being the primary cause of why Victor had been angry in the first place, but how precisely he pins it. He must have known then that it wouldn’t have been received well.

 

“Thank you,” Victor says again, because he’s not sure he’d ever have been able to offer that kind of apology with such apparent ease. He puts down the bowl.

 

Yuuri’s hair is longer than when Victor first arrived, and he makes an absentminded movement to brush it away. He looks lovely. He also finally manages to keep his eyes on Victor. “I’ve been… I want to say I’ve been in love with you since I was a child and saw you skate for the first time. I haven’t, obviously, but infatuated, yes, definitely. I’ve been in love with your _skating_ forever. But you… I never could’ve anticipated _you_.”

 

Honestly, Victor can’t anticipate anything Yuuri does, ever, and he can’t even tell where he’s going with this, but he can feel something thrum high in his chest, eager and nervous and fragilely hopeful. “I’m in love with you,” he says, because Yuuri deserves to hear it as often as possible and he selfishly hopes he can tip the odds in his favor.

 

“Victor, I – there was – Did you know how lonely I was before you got here? Here, in my own home with my parents and Mari and Minako-sensei, and I’d been licking my wounds for a long time, for far longer than I thought I would, and then you just – ” And Yuuri seems to give up on words entirely and just makes a gesture at Victor as if to say something along the lines of _you, Victor, you, everything_.

 

It’s a little bit like getting sucker punched in the very best way. Victor, isolated on his lonely mountain top of victories and fame, hadn’t known he’d been so lonely until Yuuri, either.

 

“I’m good at being lonely,” Yuuri says then, heartbreakingly honest, “and sometimes I get self-righteous about it, too. But… the thing is,” he pauses again and licks his lips before saying, tentatively, “I don’t want to be, anymore. Lonely and alone.”

 

He looks away and turns the stove off, moving the pot and putting the lid on before stepping closer to Victor. Victor, on his part, tries not to not even _breathe_ loudly in case it’ll spook him again.

 

“You’re like a siege,” Yuuri says. “I never did have a chance, did I?”

 

Victor intended for him to have all the chances in the world, didn’t intend for it to be a siege, but maybe it was. Maybe he didn’t really leave him with much of a fighting chance, but Victor is a selfish man used to winning.

 

“Victor, I’m in love with you,” he admits finally, honest and brittle as if he expects Victor to laugh or measure him only to find him exceedingly wanting. The words feel like they should change something fundamental in him, as if they should change the way he thinks or shake the world and make the skies break right open above them. They don’t.

 

They’re tentative but steady, and they settle in Victor’s chest like something firm and sure and so warm. When he reaches for Yuuri, their fingers tangle, and Yuuri goes willingly when he tugs at their woven hands. He very gently lays his free arm around Victor’s neck when Victor arranges it, and he fits so well against Victor’s side, all their edges stitched neatly together. Victor brings Yuuri’s hand up to brush his mouth over the skin and while Yuuri’s fingers twitch, they stay.

 

Victor kisses his hand and then bends down and Yuuri meets him halfway.

 

Kissing has never felt this way to anyone, ever.

 

It’s slow and searching and means so, so much to Victor. They’re on the same page and it’s divine, learning how to turn the pages together, and he reluctantly lets go of Yuuri’s hand to cup his beloved face instead, to hold him closer and just exist in the moment. There’s a plethora of ways to share first kisses, he thinks, but no first kiss in the entire history of first kisses is a perfect as this one.

 

Their teeth clack when he presses closer to Yuuri and he can feel Yuuri’s mouth curve up slightly, but his lips are soft and yielding and answering and by _god_ , Victor wishes he’d never need to breathe. It’s still slow, a deliberate, careful but sure way of keeping Yuuri close, to chase Yuuri’s lips when he exhales sharply and then as they have mere inches between them, for a long moment they hover there with warm breaths against lips.

 

“Okay?”

 

He’d thought he might be the one to ask, but it’s Yuuri, and _of course_.

 

“I’m _so_ very okay,” Victor whispers and the way Yuuri lights up in delight is a wonder of the world. The arm Victor arranged around his neck is still there, and Yuuri’s other hand has come up to clutch at his shoulder, and Victor has a hand possessively holding on to Yuuri’s hip and face. As far as personal space goes, Victor intends to be in Yuuri’s as much and as long as he’s allowed.

 

Victor can only hear their shared breaths and not even the way Yuuri’s eyes are slightly misty is enough to make him pull away. God, he only wants to be closer, so much closer. He doesn’t tell Yuuri not to cry because _he_ feels like crying, too, and Yuuri’s mouth is still forming a beautiful, small smile.

 

“Look at me, _god_ , I’m a mess,” Yuuri whispers.

 

“I _am_ looking at you,” Victor whispers back, or attempts to, but his voice feels like it’s cracking right over in the middle. “You’re not a mess.”

 

Yuuri laughs and the sound is slightly wet, and Victor brushes the tears away. He opens his mouth, but Victor beats him to the punch, “Don’t even think about apologizing,” he says sternly and then kisses him again before Yuuri can protest, and because he can, and because he’s allowed to, and because he wants to.

 

If Victor had been the siege, then Yuuri is the merciful, triumphant conqueror, because Yuuri might never have stood a chance once Victor was there, but Victor had had no choice, following the siren call across the world.

 

Yuuri exhales and opens up under him, clings to him and Victor can’t help but think how their kiss is a total, mutual capitulation. Maybe they _are_ messes, the both of them, but maybe that’s alright, too. Something in Yuuri completely undoes him, he’s left entirely defenseless, and he doesn’t want it any other way.

 

For long, long moments, nothing exists but the two of them and the way they fit together perfectly.

 

He wants to tell Yuuri everything, but he has a feeling Yuuri already knows.  Yuuri with his wise eyes and kind heart, he must know, because Victor has been talking all along, so much, so many words his body has been screaming.

 

Yuuri breaks away, touches his fingertips so gently to Victor’s collarbone, breathes shallowly and Victor needs to still be kissing him, so he presses his mouth to Yuuri’s forehead and folds him in to the curve of his chest, wants him ever closer, _closer_ , close enough to lose his breath completely. He feels so happy he could burst.

 

“Let’s go,” Yuuri says, eyes still closed and breathless. Victor _aches_.

 

In Victor’s room, with Makkachin still asleep in the kitchen, Victor sits down on his bed and stares up at Yuuri and it’s a fact, as fundamental as breathing: he can’t get enough. 

 

Yuuri stares back, stares down at him, stands so close and with his hands on Victor’s shoulders till Victor leans forward, his arms folding around Yuuri’s knees, then up, up, around his thighs and he leans in until he can press his cheek to Yuuri’s stomach. Yuuri’s hands are gentle on his head, fingers in his hair, and under his cheek, Victor can feel him bend over him until they’re a contorted mess of bodies. When Yuuri pushes at his shoulders, Victor topples backwards like a domino and looks up at Yuuri looking down.

 

 _Look at me_ , he wants to say, _look at the mighty Victor Nikiforov fallen down from his pedestal, now just a man in love_. There’s nothing _just_ about it – he feels mighty, he feels humbled, he feels so entirely too much of everything, he feels like he’s never been alive before this.

 

“Don’t think too much,” Victor pleads.

 

Yuuri nods, then kneels on the bed, hovers and then shuffles up the bed in tandem with Victor until they’re entangled, legs twined, so, so close, and Victor just wants to be kissing him forever, to have him even closer and then tug him a little bit closer when he can’t possibly pull him any nearer. There’s no upper limit to his greediness; he wants Yuuri’s attention, his time, his love, his everything. He wants his dominance and his submission, his thoughts and his heart, and, tangled entirely with bodies, mouths, breaths, a primal part of him crows in victory.

 

Yuuri exhales, an explosion of air and Victor feels like feathers, light and airy, and Yuuri’s hands are searing a brand into the skin of his neck where his fingers clutch, and Victor will hear this leash proudly.

 

“God,” Yuuri rasps, wrenching his mouth from Victor’s. “ _God_.”

 

Victor is fine with blasphemy, will smile sharply to the name of god, and he consents, bites Yuuri’s neck in ownership and is entirely unprepared for the chill of Yuuri’s body when suddenly, they’re on the floor.

 

They blink at each other in the relative darkness, the sound of their harsh breaths suddenly boxed in, and Yuuri looks so shocked that Victor can only laugh.

 

“Well,” Victor laughs, his voice a wrecked resemblance of his usual tenor, “I did tell you to take me with you the next time.”

 

It’s like the laugh bubbles up in Yuuri without his permission through his surprise and through his too many fast paced, fraught thoughts, and it spills over in a sound Victor wants to mirror himself in. He folds his arms tightly around Yuuri’s entirely solid form and he laughs into his neck, feels Yuuri shake from shock, embarrassment and laughter, so much laughter.

 

“Sorry,” he says, through giggles, through guffaws, and he says, “stand up with me,” and Victor follows blindly, like an obedient sheep following its herder, stands with him and feels chilly as he looks down at their legs going through the bed, through the dense mattress, and he lifts his legs when Yuuri prompts him to, until they’re both back on the bed, facing each other and feeling entirely too full.

 

“You’re a marvel,” he says because there’s nothing for it, no one like Katsuki Yuuri in this world or the next.

 

Yuuri, pink and flushed, pleased through his body’s betrayal, smiles like nothing can hurt him. Victor had thought, weeks ago, that he could do anything to Yuuri while Yuuri trusted him with his sleep, but Yuuri could do anything to him, too, asleep or awake and Victor wouldn’t stop him. It’s like being given the keys to the city; he’s handed over his keys to Yuuri, handed over his miserable, aching, misshapen heart and said, _do it, anything, do everything you want and I won’t stop you, you can do anything to me and I won’t care_.

 

Yuuri handles him so gently.

 

His hands are sure, a surprise so stunning Victor wants to cry.

 

He stops holding back and cries. He feels so safe here with Yuuri; Yuuri, who kisses him and holds him close and lets him smear his tears all over his shirt, and Victor doesn’t mind his defenselessness, his entire heart being held by this graceful boy.

 

*

 

Yuuri, on his stomach, lulled by Victor’s repeated motion of fingers gliding over his t-shirted back, says; “I don’t think I needed to understand,” in response to Victor’s unspoken prod at Yuuri’s admission of defeat to Victor’s steady siege of love. “It’s maybe more that I needed to be understood.”

 

And that is why Victor would have chosen Yuuri over and over again if there’d ever been a real choice. And Yuuri says, “You know I’m stuck here.”

 

“I don’t care,” he says, sure and quick. He can live with it, will bear Yuuri’s grief as a personal cross.

 

“I – ”

 

“Don’t, not tonight,” Victor entreats him and presses his hand flat high on Yuuri’s back, kneads his fingers into yielding flesh and gives up trying to stay away, folds down on his side and leans his head into Yuuri’s shoulder. It takes some wiggling, some body negotiating to get comfortably close, with Yuuri’s arm slung around his midriff, Victor not able to get physically closer even if he tried.

 

And Yuuri, miraculously, doesn’t.

 

Not tonight.

 

*

 

Victor surprises himself on their run early next morning when they take a break, and says, “Tell me about Phichit.”

 

Yuuri looks surprised, too. “What? Why?”

 

Victor shrugs. “I heard about you first, really about you, when I visited him and he told me about your time in Detroit.”

 

“You’ve _met_ Phichit,” Yuuri says as if that is enough, and it probably is, but Victor is greedy and wants more, every piece of Yuuri he can get. “What do you want me to say?”

 

“He told me how you never paid for your own coffee,” Victor examples and delights in the way Yuuri flushes, “and how you danced in the kitchen and threw soapy sponges at each other. I want to hear about him from you.” He doesn’t say that it tells so much about a person how they talk about their friends, and Victor has come to respect how fiercely Phichit and Yuuri protect each other. He doesn’t say that he wants Yuuri to keep talking forever and ever and even when he doesn’t talk, his body is still singing.

 

Yuuri sits down on the bench they’ve stopped by, and he nods as if to himself. “Phichit stepped on my glasses the first time we met.”

 

Victor blinks. Whatever he’d thought he’d hear first, that wasn’t it. “What?”

 

The corner of Yuuri’s mouth rises slightly. “Through a series of events you’d seriously think only happen in movies, we’d collided and were on the floor, and while I’m trying to find out where my glasses were, Phichit gets up and I just _hear_ the crack.”

 

Victor grins.

 

“I still lord it over him from time to time,” Yuuri admits with a grin that matches Victor’s. “We bonded over me not being able to see anything while he tried to convince Ciao Ciao that a hockey player had thrown my glasses out of a window. It was that or his hamsters had eaten them.”

 

Having met Phichit, Victor can believe it. “He was very protective of you when I first got to Detroit. I was a little bit scared.”

 

Yuuri’s grin fades slightly, but when Victor reaches for him, he reaches back. “It’s so weird to talk about it, because it feels like it happened such a long time ago, but… he did think he’d lost me. I spend a lot of time trying not to worry people. I mean, I did that before, too, but now it’s just, it’s much, _much_ more important.”

 

Victor could say that Yuuri should spend more time thinking about how to be happy instead of trying so hard to make everyone else happy, but he doesn’t, because Yuuri can’t help it.

 

“If I were Phichit,” Victor begins and squeezes Yuuri’s hand, “I’d probably cash in on some of that coffee you never paid for.”

 

Predictably, Yuuri flushes. “I never asked for coffee, it’s just that people kept trying to get me to have coffee with them? Um. Phichit said they were trying to get me to go on dates with them, but most of the time they asked for help with their homework, so…”

 

He’s adorable and entirely too oblivious for his own good, and Victor adores him. “I’m glad they never succeeded in asking you out. Their loss.”

 

Yuuri glares playfully. “I never said no one succeeded in asking me out.”

 

It’s – it’s probably not flattering how hotly jealousy burns in him. He has no right and no reason, but he can feel himself bristling at the thought of Yuuri with someone else; even hypothetically; even in the past. Retrospective jealousy? If it’s a thing, Victor has it, and Yuuri probably sees something on his face, because his glare softens, and he tangles their fingers.

 

He looks good in the morning light, face fuller than when Victor arrived. He’s almost as Victor imagines he’d be if he was following a diet and a full training regime, nearly there. Maybe a kilo more and he’ll be at his peak. He’s not sure Yuuri has noticed he’s gained weight, but the healthy flush is such good look on him that Victor selfishly wants to take credit for it, even partially.

 

Hypothetically – Victor has had lovers in his life, but not many. The truth of the matter is that in a sport like theirs, no one really understands unless they live and breathe the ice, too. He’d dated, he’d had sex, but only a handful of times; in all honesty, it’s never interested him much. A biproduct of never having the time set aside for anything but training, training and more training, he’d put off his present happiness for a later time and everything eventually lost its sheen. Being around other people in any other capacity than training and competing turned exhausting, and even then it’d been a struggle sometimes.

 

“I dated a guy for some time in my third year. Cute Justin Liu, math major,” Yuuri says. “I thought – it felt like I should? Everyone kept saying we’d look good together, and he was nice to me, so.”

 

“So,” Victor repeats. He wonders who Yuuri’s been with in his life, who he’s kissed and who he’s held, and Victor hates them on principle alone. “What happened?”

 

Yuuri sighs. “Nothing happened. Which was probably the point. He was always asking me what I was thinking and how I was feeling and he was very, um, present and touchy. All the time.”

 

Victor’s fingers twitch on Yuuri’s on reflex. There’s a cultural difference, Victor knows, but he’s been so, so careful to be affectionate only when they don’t have an audience. He thinks Yuuri would have told him if he minded – so far he’ll take whatever Yuuri wants to give him.

 

“It just felt like – he wanted to be everywhere. The only place I’m only ever really alone is in my head and even there, he wanted to, I don’t know, to _be_ , somehow. It was like he felt I owed him something, like, the way he wanted to know what I thought all the time. It felt like he was intruding, like he was entitled to my feelings at any time he liked, and I felt terrible by the time I ended things.”

 

Truthfully, Victor wouldn’t mind knowing what goes on in Yuuri’s head at any given time, but then there’s the want of wanting what Yuuri wants to give him. If he knew what Yuuri thought it’d make things exceptionally easier, but Victor has never done anything the easy way. If Yuuri wants to tell him, he will, and Victor will greedily take everything.

 

Yuuri shrugs as he scoots a little bit closer on the bench, and their thighs almost touch, which is somehow more intimate than if they _were_ touching, because the warmth of Yuuri is tantalizing. “Phichit offered to break up with him for me, I think he said something like me moving at glacial pace. Something like the new ice age coming and going before I managed to end things.”

 

Phichit is a good friend and Victor is so happy for Yuuri to have that kind of friendship. He squeezes Yuuri’s hand again. “I’m glad you had him in Detroit.”

 

“We were two really lost boys trying to play house,” Yuuri says with a wry smile. “It made homesickness a little bit easier to stomach.”

 

Victor has never had a friend like Phichit, not one so close and not one so dear. He has Chris, but that’s an entirely different kind of friendship. Yuuri and Phichit seem like a tight knit unit, a united front against the world. It’s a lovely thought even if it makes Victor envious, just a little bit.

 

Victor may have won competitions for a long time and been many different places, but he’s never lived away from St. Petersburg and Moscow, has never had to fend entirely for himself in a country not his own. It’s another one of those things that make Yuuri so brave but so unwilling to hear it.

 

He gets to his feet and tugs Yuuri up with him, keeps hold of his hand and doesn’t tell Yuuri he’s brave, because Yuuri already knows what Victor thinks about that and doesn’t want to hear it. Not yet. Victor will love him enough to make Yuuri believe it someday.

 

*

 

Surrounded by Japan – its people and its culture, it shouldn’t really be a surprise that Yuuri looks very Japanese, sometimes. Victor loves it. He looks – well, Victor doesn’t actually have words for all the ways he finds Yuuri devastatingly gorgeous, the simplest, smallest things he does is terrifyingly attractive, like the way he laces up his skates or the way he closes a door or reaches for something high up on a shelf, but sometimes he just looks so exotic to Victor’s European-wired brain.

 

Victor _loves_ it.

 

“Seventy-three,” he announces, jubilant, just as Yuuri settles under the covers. Victor scoots as close as he can possibly get.

 

Yuuri blanches. “No,” he says, but Victor is sure. He keeps count.

 

“You haven’t passed through anything, on accident, in more than three days.”

 

Yuuri looks like he might cry and he kisses Victor just when Victor thinks Yuuri can’t possibly surprise him more. He’s filled to the brim with affection, with fondness, with everything Yuuri is, it’s all-encompassing and Yuuri kisses him like magnets pulling them together.

 

Victor has never really considered living anywhere else than Russia, but it really feels like he lives here now. He has Makkachin and most of his things, and most importantly, Yuuri. There’s life here, not just imbued with Yuuri’s love, but a calm he’s learning to appreciate all the more for how rare he suspects it really is.

 

On the beach, Victor looks at Yuuri and feels so full. Over dinner, with Yuuri’s parents poking fun at the both of them, he feels so grateful. And in the middle of it all, Yuuri is learning. It might not progress as quickly as Yuuri would have liked, but it does. He fades less and less often, is more prone to blushing red than disappearing, and Victor is so proud of him, feels it flutter in his chest.

 

“It’s like a superpower,” Victor says to him in the middle of the night. “You could be a hero.”

 

It’s like Victor can _hear_ him rolling his eyes. “Sure.”

 

“Well,” Victor amends. “I mean, you are already a hero to me, but a hero that could help people. Like, a secret agent! You’d need a codename and everything!”

 

Yuuri’s hand touches his face, a gentle rebuke – he has surprisingly good aim in the dark. He’s still reserved, still a wonderful bundle of nerves, but he’s bolder with Victor now and so charming even when Victor is the victim.

 

“I’d save people _from_ me,” Yuuri says dryly. “Disappear from sight before they saw me. They’d say ‘oh, it’s the Disappearing Man! Where did he go?’ And then they’d be relieved they didn’t have to deal with me.”

 

Victor tickles him, and Yuuri’s peal of laughter is delightful. “Hey, don’t say that about my hero! Codename…”

 

“Moron? Awkward? Certified Mess?”

 

“Yuuri!”

 

“It’s true!” Yuuri is still laughing and he’s so close in the dark, his breath almost a physical touch on Victor’s neck, and Victor craves the closeness and the intimacy like nothing he’s ever known. It’s not just that Yuuri is so beautiful (and hot and sexy and so, so charming) although he is, but he’s just so much more. Yuuri walks the earth being terrified half the time, but he still does it.

 

He lets Victor hold him in the night and he’s so, so brave.

 

*


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH MY GOD. THE END. /manic cackle. I managed to edit, somehow, what is sleep? And just in time for Christmas, too? Thank you so much to everyone who's been reading, quietly or otherwise, it means a lot to me :)

“Just focus, Yuuri,” Minako says and Victor’s stomach tightens uncomfortably. “You can do this, I know you can.”

 

When thinking about it now, it seems inevitable that Minako would find out about Yuuri trying his hardest to train – trying his desperate best to not disappear. Victor, his biggest cheerleader, had been bragging about Yuuri and his, at the time on-going five day streak and Minako had decided that Victor was too soft. When Victor had said that they were training, Minako had looked at him and raised an eyebrow in disbelief, which, well, she did have a point, somewhere. Victor is well aware of the fact that he isn’t prime coach material, although he thinks he could’ve made a decent shot at it if only because of his innate stubbornness.

 

Minako had raised her eyebrow even higher.

 

Yuuri disagreed and here they are, Minako trying to coax Yuuri through three floors in a dead drop.

 

“He can do runs just fine,” Victor had said. “I’ve seen him run through five walls in a row.” Which is not as weird a sentence to him that it had seemed two or three months ago. Now it’s his new normal, just another day in the life of Victor Nikiforov. Watcing Yuuri, beautiful, insecure Yuuri run through walls and disappear on the regular.

 

Minako doesn’t say anything, just eyes the ceiling above them in silent contemplation. She’s wearing an earpiece with a tiny microphone directly connected to Yuuri on top of the house. Why she has an earpiece like that, Victor thinks he’s better off not asking and not knowing.

 

“I’ve known him since he was a baby,” Minako says with a hand covering the microphone, as if that fact will make her infinitely more qualified. Victor isn’t so sure. She moves her hand away from the microphone and says, “Yuuri, just concentrate on falling and then go tangible just as you pass through the first floor. Eh, I mean, the third ceiling you pass through. The last one. That is the first floor. Oh dear, this is confusing.”

 

Victor can’t make out the words, but he definitely hears something from Minako’s earpiece that doesn’t sound very polite. He tries not to look too smug.

 

There’s a mattress on the floor right below where they expect Yuuri to come through. Well, there’s a whole lot of mattresses because Victor had insisted when he’d seen Yuuri’s eyes widen in horror.

 

“This is a bad idea,” Victor mutters, because he knows it is. Yuuri has long streaks of good days now, far more good than bad, and he’s doing so well with controlling his powers, but Victor isn’t convinced this is the right way. Put pressure on Yuuri the wrong way and he’ll bend in ways that take long to straighten out. At least until Yuuri believes in himself, Victor would really like if they could avoid serious setbacks.

 

“Come on,” Minako mutters and then there’s a screech that makes Victor freeze.

 

“Yuuri!”

 

Minako winces as the shriek fades in her earpiece. “Yuuri? What happened? Are you alright?” She looks across at Victor as she waits and then she wordlessly takes off the ear piece and hands it to Victor.

 

“Yuuri? Are you alright?” As he fits it on his ear, all he hears is the quick breathing of someone trying their very best not to escalate into hyperventilation. “Yuuri, my love, I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me.” Even as he says this, he’s heading for the stairs and he gets to the second floor in record time. As he gets there, his breath catches in his throat.

 

“ _Yuuri_ ,” he breathes but doesn’t dare touch him, because Yuuri is somewhere in between third and second floor, appearing to be attempting to _claw_ his way up, trying to hold on to the floor. He doesn’t tell Yuuri to stay calm, because that is going to do the exact opposite, and damn it, he _knew_ this was such a terrible idea. “Yuuri, listen to me, okay? Look at me.”

 

Yuuri’s eyes are huge in his pale face, pupils blown wide with fear, and his skin is glistening with perspiration; the effort of keeping his breath just tightly enough in control to avoid full-blown panic is exhausting for him.

 

He obeys; he’s looking at Victor.

 

“Look, you’ve already made it through one and a half floor, you only need one and a half more. Okay? And if you don’t want to, that’s fine, too. If you can get up right now, we’ll call the rest of it off, just get you back up and calm down, and if you don’t want to do it again at all, that’s okay, too. Okay?”

 

Yuuri is a shaking mess, his fingers trembling and white with how hard he’s trying to hold on to the floor – it’s all in his head, Victor knows, because only some of him is intangible at this point and it’s probably even more difficult to stay half tangible instead of just letting himself pass right through, but Victor doesn’t tell him that. Yuuri doesn’t say anything just shivers and takes a huge, gulping breath, fingers tightening impossibly.

 

“You’re doing so well,” Victor assures him and walks closer, calmly, slopes into a crouch and is so near now that he lets himself reach for one of Yuuri’s hands, and it’s a relief when Yuuri grips him right back, his hold painful in its desperation. “If you can make all of you intangible except for the hand I’m holding, I can try and pull you up, would that be okay?”

 

Yuuri gasps another lungful of air but shakes his head.

 

“Or, you can turn me intangible, too, and we’ll both drop right through the next one and a half floor and hit the mattresses. How does that sound?” Victor is proud of how even his voice is in the face of Yuuri’s panic, and he knows he’ll have to keep his cool.

 

“No,” Yuuri gasps, horrified. “I – I’m afraid- - what if I can’t _stop_?”

 

“When you get to the mattresses?”

 

“I – I might not – not – ” Yuuri takes another huge breath, through his panic he’s slowly focusing, “- maybe I’m not quick enough, what – what if I’m not quick enough?”

 

“You’ll be perfect,” Victor says, sounding and feeling perfectly confident. “Especially if you take me with you, because you won’t let that happen to _me_.”

 

Yuuri is quiet, the only sound booming between them is his loud breath, and his disbelief is so thick Victor can feel it; feel it in the tremor of his bones, the clammy skin of his fingers, the grip that will leave bruises on his hand.

 

“You – ”

 

He doesn’t tell Yuuri that he’s brave – Yuuri is dangling halfway through a floor, trying desperately not to lose the uphill battle with anxiety and logic – but he can say something else, something he probably should have told him much sooner: “I have faith in you,” he promises and slowly moves so he’s as close to Yuuri as he possibly can in his crouch on the floor, and he rearranges Yuuri’s tight grip from his hand upwards to his upper arm instead and immediately, Yuuri’s nails dig in. “I’m going to take your other hand, okay? And I’ll hold you for as long as I can, and then you’re going to drop us both when you’re ready. Take your time.”

 

In any other situation, Victor would hate to be on the receiving end of Yuuri’s horrification, but he has perfect trust in Yuuri in this. Yuuri won’t let any of his perceived shortcomings hurt Victor, not if he has any say in it. He moves slowly, very slowly, his fingers only touching the back of Yuuri’s hand at first, stroking the skin carefully but tenderly. “Alright?”

 

Yuuri looks frightened and his breath is still just shy of hyperventilation, but for now it’s still just quick and not hysterical. His fingers are a vice on Victor’s arm, but Victor chooses to focus on Yuuri’s eyes, checking for anything that will indicate his complete disappearance, because despite everything right now, Yuuri is still here.

 

“Slow,” Victor promises and curls his fingers around Yuuri’s, the skin cold and sticky to the touch. “Okay? Look, you’re almost there. I’ll pull you up a little, so focus on my hands and don’t make me fall through.”

 

Yuuri’s breath is a sharp inhale, a deeper exhale as his focus sharpens and Victor could honestly weep with pride. He pries Yuuri’s grip away from the floor and feels the weight of him tug on his arms, a firm but heavy pull, and he holds steady the best he can, wrenches Yuuri upwards and he falls into Yuuri’s body when he finally resurfaces completely.

 

Victor folds him in, boxes his arms around him and feels like he will shield Yuuri forever if he needs to.

“You’ve got me,” is what he chooses to say, because it’s the truth. Yuuri won’t let anything happen to him. “Whenever you’re ready.”

 

Yuuri’s hands are tight on his arms, his body an entire exhale, and then he says, quite calm and only betrayed by his racing heart; “Alright.”

 

And there’s a full body shiver, the coolness of invisibility, the rush of wood and structures, then clean air, then more structure as they rush through, and Victor feels –

 

They land with a dull thud, one of Yuuri’s legs slightly through the mattresses until he pulls it up, and his entire body goes limp with an almighty shudder, safe in Victor’s hold, in Victor’s arms where Victor didn’t slacken his grip at all.

 

“Thank god,” Victor mutters and one of Yuuri’s hands comes up to slug his shoulder. “ _Ow_.”

 

“You’re _such_ a jerk,” Yuuri mumbles into his shirt, somewhere in the vicinity of his collarbones. “Oh god, that was – ”

 

“Amazing!” Victor finishes for him now that the chance of him getting stuck on the first floor is over. “Yuuri, that was amazing, you did it!”

 

“What if I’d gotten you stuck?!”

 

“But you didn’t! And you know, I feel like we’ve had this conversation before and I think you should – ”

 

“Never do that again,” Yuuri hisses, “It’s so difficult keeping track of my own limbs at all times, I can’t keep track of you, too!”

 

Victor laughs and flops down, relaxing his weight entirely. “Oh, but that was amazing! You need to do that again!”

 

“Without you,” Yuuri says flatly and raises his head to glare at him.

 

“If that’s what it takes,” Victor promises and cards his hand through Yuuri’s hair, away from his face. “You’re brilliant.”

 

“Look,” Minako cuts in, awkward from the side, “I get that you guys are whatever it is you are, but maybe keep it at home?”

 

Victor half-expects Yuuri to fold in on himself the way he does when he’s embarrassed, but if anything he makes himself more comfortable on Victor. They must’ve made a sight, falling through the ceiling, Yuuri encased in Victor’s arms and landing in a heap of entwined limbs.

 

Victor regrets nothing.

 

*

 

“Yuuri?”

 

Yuuri hums. He’s in one of Victor’s t-shirts, on his stomach on the bed, probably already half-asleep. He’d managed to get Yuuri through three floors six consecutive times until Yuuri was fading not by choice but from exhaustion.

 

“What did it feel like?”

 

It’s not entirely what he wants to ask; Is it harder for you to stay solid than to disappear? Is every moment existing difficult for you?

 

Yuuri hums again, stretching slightly, fingers twitching in the sheets. Victor wants to lie _on_ him, encase him, keep him safe and secure and _present_. He wants so many things around Yuuri all the time, he feels greedy and selfish and not nearly close enough, when close can’t ever _be_ close enough. “Yuuri.”

 

“Scary,” Yuuri finally says after another long moment and then he turns his head slightly, opens the one eye visible to Victor.

 

“But you did it anyway,” Victor offers and lies down next to Yuuri, scooting up close, slinging an arm over his back, stroking his hand flat on the curve of Yuuri’s spine.

 

Yuuri’s breath is a gentle sigh, body exhausted from the day. When Victor keeps stroking his back, scratching slightly, Yuuri just about melts against him. “’s nice,” he says, voice slurred.

 

Victor grins. “Are you falling asleep, darling?” He’s never had this kind of closeness with anyone before, this kind of want for sleeping next to someone, and he thinks; _I’ve changed_. He feels it more, these days with Yuuri, how it feels like he’s awake again and how the world is brushed in vivid colors.

 

The oddest thing about it all is that he likes himself. He doesn’t think he _didn’t_ like himself, before Yuuri, before Hasetsu, before _everything_ , it’s just that he feels more like himself now, and above all, he _feels_.

 

With Yuuri so relaxed and so trusting, it’s such a long way from the first day he laid eyes on Yuuri in Ice Castle Hasetsu, skating and disappearing on him, spooked by every wrong move.

 

He smiles and can feel his cheeks almost hurting with it. “Yuuri,” he says, pressing ever-closer, presses his head to Yuuri’s shoulder, tugs him snugly against his stomach. “Goodnight.”

 

Yuuri’s mouth quirks slightly and then he’s asleep.

 

*

 

Okay, so when he wakes, his arm is actually going _through_ Yuuri’s stomach. Yuuri only grumbles, moves his arm and materializes with a definitive yawn and then he sleeps again. Victor doesn’t even bother trying to hide his grin.

 

*

 

Yuuri’s body: a revelation. An epiphany.

 

A symphony.

 

An answer to a question Victor hadn’t realized he’d been posing.

 

There’s a spot on his right leg, just behind his knee that makes him sigh when Victor touches it, his entire body a shudder when Victor touches him right. Maybe it’s not so much that Victor didn’t know he’d been asking questions, but more that he’s been asking the _wrong_ questions with his body all his life when now it seems like all Yuuri’s body seems to say is _yes_.

 

He can run his fingers up Yuuri’s stunning legs, tease sighs and giggles and lovely sounds from his bruised mouth, follow his fingers with his mouth and press touches into Yuuri’s hip bones. He’s never wanted this way before, not craved this surrender before, not wanted to submit so much. He could crawl on his knees, prostrate himself and it wouldn’t matter.

 

Yuuri holds him so safely.

 

Yuuri’s fingers are often on a mission of their own – when it’s dark in Victor’s room, Yuuri’s fingers are hesitant at first but then sure and bold, and Victor is quite sure he’s never been explored with this kind of joy and boyish eagerness before, it leaves him breathless. It’s not like he has much to compare with, but he doesn’t think sex has ever been this much _fun_ before either.

 

Yuuri – soft and sated and so achingly pretty in the dim light he’s conceded to, and Victor doesn’t know what to do with all these things he’s feeling.

 

His fingers push Victor’s fringe away, tender on the skin beside his eyes. “I’m not good at these things,” Yuuri says, a hushed confession as if any louder words would cut into their bubble, “but you’re…” he trails off and Victor isn’t so sure he’ll get anything else from him, but that’s okay. Yuuri is willing to _try_.

 

“I – I love you,” Yuuri says, helpless but not like he’s giving up, it’s more like a punctuation, a finality. It’s an answer. Before there ever was a Yuuri to love him, Victor had never truly allowed himself to want this way. “I want to hold on to you, even when I’m disappearing.”

 

He knows Yuuri doesn’t understand and doesn’t believe entirely; doesn’t believe that he deserves it and doesn’t understand that Victor finds him to be so much more than _he_ ever deserved. That’s okay, Victor will be happy to tell Yuuri every day that he’s perfect as he is; after all, he’s never expected anything else from Victor.

 

“I love you, too,” he returns and revels in the way the words are a trill off his tongue, natural and like he’s been waiting his entire life for this. Yuuri blooms beside him, smiles like it’s just for him, like the secrets he keeps tucked in behind his teeth are for Victor to find, to pull out into the light. If the serenity Victor finds here, in this small coastal town, here with Yuuri, is a gift, then he’ll return it tenfold if he’s able; breathe confidence into Yuuri’s heart in a pale return for the life Yuuri has breathed into his soul.

 

He reaches for Yuuri; cups the back of his head and tilts it to meet his own waiting mouth. It seems like a good place to start.

 

*

 

Minako kidnaps Yuuri for the day; left to his own devices, Victor goes for a long walk on the beach with Makkachin.

 

Then he calls Yakov.

 

“Vitya,” he says, sounding exactly like he always does: world-weary but resigned to it and determined to keep the stupidity of Earth’s population at bay by sheer stubbornness and a healthy dose of yelling. His eyebrows raise in what Victor recognizes as surprise. “You sound – _happy_.”

 

Victor grins. “Why do you sound so surprised?” He doesn’t know why he asks, because he’s well aware of how he looked when he departed Russia – it just feels great to be validated by Yakov of all people.

 

Victor can _hear_ how Yakov’s eyes narrow. “Stop fishing,” he says. “I’m not indulging you. Why are you calling?”

 

Victor has watched this unfold for years: if one is not familiar with Yakov, they’d be hurt, angered or a mix of the two by Yakov’s tone and choice of words, but Victor has grown up under Yakov’s watchful eye, from his teen years to now, for just about half his life, and he knows what it means. In his own emotionally stunted ways, Yakov cares a lot more than anyone gives him credit for.

 

But why _is_ he calling? “How are you all?”

 

The sharp exhale through a phone. “We’re fine, Vitya.”

 

For a long moment, Victor just closes his eyes and listens to Yakov’s even, deep breaths. “I’m not coming back,” he finally says.

 

Yakov barks a laugh. “I figured. You’re probably terribly and undeniably out of shape by now, anyway, you’d have a hell of a time getting ready for next season. Better to not try, and save what’s left of your ankles and knees for your future.”

 

Victor frowns. “I’ll have you know I’m in excellent shape.” It’s true, too. He might not be in peak condition, but he still trains right alongside Yuuri, both on and off the ice. It’d seemed terribly unfair to have Yuuri work his ass off if Victor was just lounging beside him when Victor had finally come back to the ice.

 

Yakov makes a disbelieving sound and switches topic. “How’s Japan?”

 

Victor hesitates. He wants to say: Yuuri is the most beautiful person in the entire world. He’s the kindest, most precious human being in the galaxy. He’s everything I never knew I wanted in life and he made me rediscover skating for _fun_. He’s so brave he makes _me_ want to be brave, too, because he faces the world every single day even when he’s scared. I never knew before Yuuri that there was this much to life, how to live not just for myself but for him too, because living for him makes me want to be better to myself.

 

He doesn’t say: I’ve missed out on so much and I never even knew that, but now I know and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

 

What he actually says is; “Japan is nice.”

 

Yakov can probably hear the vast understatement for what it is, because he has always been frighteningly adept at reading Victor even when Victor fought to be unreadable to the world at large. “That’s surprisingly vague for you.”

 

Victor shrugs even though Yakov isn’t there to see it. What can he say? It’s not like he’s promised Yuuri or anyone that he won’t tell, but it goes without saying. Protection blooms in his chest, but if he can’t tell Yakov then who can he tell? Well, no one until he’s talked to Yuuri about it, that’s for sure. He’s worked so hard to gain Yuuri’s trust, he’s sure not going to jeopardize it now, not even for Yakov.

 

“I’m staying with Yuuri’s parents,” he allows. “They’ve been really good to me.”

 

Yakov probably hears every single word Victor is carefully not saying, and bless him, he doesn’t say anything else to it. He lets Victor be. “So what now? Are you going to stay in Japan forever, chasing a boy that disappeared a long time ago now?”

 

And it’s true – Yuuri disappeared in the depths of the dark winter, and it’s summer now, it’s been a long time and the world has moved on around them, even as Victor’s world has tilted on its axis and started spinning faster than ever before. “I don’t know,” he says, which is also the truth. He doesn’t know what will happen in the future, but he knows he wants Yuuri in it, in whatever capacity he’s allowed. If that means he’ll stay in Hasetsu and work on building his life here then so be it. “For now I’ll stay.”

 

It’s a new thing for him, to not be moving aggressively forward. He’s been reinventing himself for his entire skating career, but this foundation of being himself with all it entails is new.

 

“You’re different,” Yakov says, his voice gruff and determinedly flat and devoid of emotion. “I think it’s good.”

 

Victor smiles at the phone. “I think it’s good, too.”

 

*

 

He’d stayed at the beach for a while longer, throwing sticks for Makkachin and Makkachin watching him right back as if expecting Victor to run after them instead, and when he’d returned to Yutopia, Yuuri still wasn’t back.

 

He waves cheerily at Hiroko in the kitchen and sets out for the private part of the onsen, finds a quiet corner and sits. He thinks, and thinks.

 

Yakov’s voice rings in his ears. What now?

 

Leaving Hasetsu as things stand is out of the question unless Yuuri explicitly tells him to leave. He doesn’t want to leave this place, not without Yuuri, and leaving feels like it would require him to dissolve completely and physically sift every molecule of him infused with Yuuri and Hasetsu out of his body, because every inhale is Yuuri’s presence, every exhale is Yuuri’s name.

 

What would he want, given the choice?

 

Maybe he could learn from Yuuri’s courage and actually ask him.

 

What do you want, Yuuri? Do you feel this between us as deeply as I do, this need to be as close as possible and not let go? Does your heart feel like it’s about to give out from the weight of how you feel? Do I make you feel like you have wings and can fly to the highest pinnacle and does it feel like you can do absolutely anything when I’m with you? Do I give you courage to face the world when it all becomes too much, and can I make you hold yourself tightly together when you’re falling apart at the seams?

 

Am I everything you’ve ever wanted, just like I can’t imagine anyone being as perfect for me as you are? Do you like my flaws as much as I like yours? You could be designed for me, am I that for you?

 

Will you keep me here and hold me as tightly as I want to hold you? Do you want me even _half_ as close as I want you? Do you want me half as much as I want you?

 

Am I too much?

 

Do I make you happy?

 

Will you care for me and love me forever?

 

Will you let me _stay_ …?

 

He sighs. He’s not good at worrying and never has been. Weird how he’s worried more ever since he _left_ the ice, rather than when he was actually there. There were many things to consider at the time, and not just choreography and base value for a program, but also his survival through a season, like walking bold-faced into a war and emerging on the other side, not knowing which condition he’d be in when he got out again. Would his body be ready for another season, would he have new scars to bear?

 

He didn’t think about it that much, at the time. He’d had eyes on the goal, gold in the eyes of everyone, gold to match the ones he’d already won, and nothing less would be satisfactory.

 

Strange how things that had once seemed important had turned so empty in time.

 

Now there’s Yuuri.

 

Something rustles behind him and he turns to see Yuuri appearing gradually, and he stumbles towards Victor, who shoots to his feet.

 

“Yuuri!”

 

Yuuri is trembling in his hold when he catches him. “Yuuri, what’s wrong? What happened?”

 

Yuuri lets out something that sounds like a sob and his fingers are holding Victor’s shirt so tightly it might permanently be stretched into crescent shapes. His throat works, and he stutters out a breath. “Victor,” he tries. “Can you just – can we be like this? Just – just for a moment longer?”

 

Something inside him breaks; he never knew his heart to be so fragile. If Yuuri even has to ask, he has work to do. “Of course,” he says and holds him tighter, folds him in, and he’ll shield him for as long as he’s needed.

 

It’s much later when Yuuri speaks truly. He’s huddled so close to Victor, who obliges him and keeps him under his arm. Victor keeps his arm tight around him, occasionally sweeping over his back, and it’s only now that Yuuri has stopped shaking, and Victor doesn’t want to let go of him. If he can touch him, he’s close enough. For now. Languid strokes down his back, fingers pressing to Yuuri’s shoulder blades, a dance down his spine.

 

“Minako-sensei says she’s been looking into it, very carefully, for some time now,” Yuuri begins haltingly. “She says – she says there are more people like, like _me_. I might not be the only one, being this way.”

 

It’s difficult to describe what Victor feels; he doesn’t _know_ how he feels. “Others? Others who can disappear at will?”

 

“Other people, other things,” Yuuri murmurs. “They can – they can do many things. I’m not the only one, not anymore. The government trains them and employs them for many different things.”

 

Victor tightens his grip on Yuuri, as if he can keep him solid through sheer determination. “What does that mean for you?”

 

Yuuri shrugs. “I don’t know. It means, maybe, that I’m not as alone as I thought I was.”

 

“Yuuri,” Victor whispers and presses his mouth to Yuuri’s temple. “You were never as alone as you thought you were.”

 

Yuuri’s hand dips under Victor’s shirt, his touch both soothing and electric. He looks up at Victor, calm now and nowhere near the hysteria he was close to when he first got back. “It feels like you saved my life, in so many ways. I don’t think you’ll ever know just how much you’ve done for me,” he offers so calmly, so honestly, that perhaps Victor’s lungs forget how to work.

 

It’s the only explanation for the way his breath hitches.

 

“But Victor,” Yuuri continues, so earnest, eyes so wide and so pretty, “what do _you_ want? I can’t bear for you to give up everything for me.”

 

“You really need to make me make my own decisions,” Victor rebukes but punctuates it with a gentle hand along his side, softening it. “Don’t you know by now that without you, I wouldn’t even want to _be_ , anymore? I don’t know how to exist without you anymore.”

 

Yuuri’s breath stutters. Victor knows how it sounds and it doesn’t sound healthy, he _knows_ that and he realizes it fully, but the truth is that Yuuri breathed life into his barren world, so it’s what he can offer Yuuri right back: his feeble life, his lonely heart. He’s not returning to skating and he doesn’t want to go back to a world that doesn’t have Yuuri in it. He’s not in a need of money, he doesn’t need to work for the rest of his life if he doesn’t insist on splurging away his fortune – if he could wrap his entirety up in Yuuri, he would.

 

There’s wetness to Yuuri’s eyes now and when he blinks, a tear escapes down his cheek. “I’m so afraid you’re making me to be everything to you and I’ll disappoint you. I don’t want you to – to become _tired_ of me, or you’ll be bored with me, I just want you to be happy. Do you… do you know that? Do you know how much I want that for you?”

 

And Victor knows Yuuri loves him, has felt it with every touch and every look, every moment of time Yuuri has granted him, every glimpse into Yuuri’s thoughts he’s been allowed, he’s felt it to the tips of his tingling fingers, but it’s now that it settles in him, like a safe knowledge, like a fundamental fact: Yuuri _loves_ him, wants him to be happy the same way Victor wants Yuuri to be nothing but happy and content and lit up from within. If Victor asks, he knows Yuuri would give up everything for him.

 

He trusts Victor with everything; his entire existence, his secret, his life, is in Victor’s clumsy hands, and Victor won’t make him regret it.

 

He never knew love like this even _existed_ – how could he? Love like this is a myth, a fantastical, thought up concept that doesn’t happen; except it _does_.

 

He’d read about it, a hundred books about love that made men go to war with bloodied hands and broken hearts, but it doesn’t happen, not in real life, not in practical terms of everyday hustle and bustle, the way humans get careless with emotions and other people when passion gets sanded down by mundanity and routine; _this_ way of loving is not something that exists.

 

But it _does_.

 

In Yuuri’s body and his loyal, fierce heart, his determination and stubborn soul that clings to existence with every molecule of him even when his body wants to betray him into letting go and disappearing. It exists like a fanned flame that fills Victor from the inside and makes him want to exist right along with him. Maybe Yuuri thinks Victor saved him, saved his life and his soul and his will to live, but Yuuri saved Victor right back and made him want to _live_.

 

Perhaps Minako was right – skaters are such dramatic beings.

 

It’s just that it feels so much. It feels immediate and urgent and so big that Victor feels like he’s containing everything now, several star systems blown to life with Yuuri’s love. This gift of life Yuuri has given him.

 

It’s a fact that Victor can live and exist in the world with Yuuri. Had Yuuri genuinely been gone and disappeared entirely from the world Victor would have gone on with his life and probably gone back to skating after a break. He could and he would, but this life he’s found here is better in every single conceivable way a life can be improved. He can recognize the kind of life he lived before Yuuri, bleak and going through the motions in robotic fashion, and he’d been in a decline mentally if not physically, not yet at least.

 

Life here has made him better and no one, not even Yuuri, can fault him for wanting to grip it tightly and not let go. Life is so short and so fickle, and so much can happen at every moment, and he wants to spend it with Yuuri. Given the choice, he’ll _keep_ choosing Yuuri.

 

“You could never disappoint me,” Victor says, fiercely and so meant and knowing that these words are ones he needs to make count. “I could never be bored with you when every moment with you is a surprise. _You_ are a surprise to me and the fact that you want _me_ is a surprise. So when you ask me what I want, I want you to believe me when I say I want to be with you, whatever it means, however you want me.”

 

Yuuri looks floored, but Victor thinks he shouldn’t be. It’s not a surprise to him, it can’t be, because Victor hasn’t been subtle. “That’s… a lot of power,” Yuuri says softly, hesitant even as his fingers on Victor’s face aren’t. “It’s a lot to give one person.”

 

“Depends on the one person,” Victor returns and tilts his face into Yuuri’s cupped hand. “If you tell me to go, I will, but _god_ , please, don’t tell me to go. I don’t want to.”

 

“I’m selfish,” Yuuri murmurs. “Stealing you from the world and I don’t even feel bad about it.”

 

“You never had the choice,” Victor says and means it so desperately much. “You’ve given me so many outs, presented me with the choice so many times, and I’ll still choose you. Always. _I_ can go back into the world, but you can’t. Trust me to make my own decision.”

 

Yuuri’s trust is not something to be taken lightly, and when he nods, once and sharply, Victor feels like he could _fly_.

 

“I choose you, too,” Yuuri says, his voice a wobble even as the corner of his mouth tips into the ghost of a smile. “You know that, don’t you? Always.”

 

Victor laughs. It feels like they’ve come out on the other side of something huge, as if they’ve somehow cemented their existence. Maybe they have, maybe sometime in the future when they’re long gone, someone will think of them and say their love is one for the ages. Maybe not. Victor is not going to war for Yuuri, but maybe he would. He doesn’t know. Maybe Yuuri will go to war for Victor if he needs to.

 

“So if you go work for the government, I’ll go with you, I’ll wait for you, I’ll keep the fires at home burning.”

 

Yuuri cries. He laughs. He cries while he laughs. “I’ll need a handler if I ever go outside in any government capacity,” he manages and it’s not fair how Yuuri crying makes Victor want to cry, too. “Codename Certified Mess needs someone to make him believe he can drop through three floors.”

 

“You really need a different codename,” Victor laughs and holds him impossibly closer, pressing his mouth to every part of Yuuri’s face he can reach, kisses his cheeks and the skin beside his eyes, an off-kilter one on his lips.

 

And Yuuri looks up at him with so much naked trust, completely unguarded, radiant and so beautiful Victor can’t breathe. “And if I never go anywhere? If I stay forever Hasetsu’s ghost?”

 

Victor kisses him. “Then it’s by choice. And I’ll stay with you if you’ll stay with me.”

 

“Always,” Yuuri promises, starry-eyed like he can’t believe he deserves it.

 

He does. He deserves everything.

 

“You can haunt me forever,” Victor promises and Yuuri’s trill of a laugh is high pitched and out of control. Victor’s own smile is wry. “I’ll admit that that sounded better in my head.”

 

Yuuri is still cackling. “Oh god, _Victor_ , why would you even – ”

 

“We were having a moment,” Victor insists primly although it’s a losing battle to keep his face neutral because Yuuri’s happiness is contagious like nothing else. “And – I’m not good at having moments?”

 

Yuuri’s smile is wide and honest and breathtaking. “You’re doing just fine,” he says, warm and flushed. “I’ll haunt you if you want me to. Really.”

 

Victor hikes Yuuri up to press him closer, and they topple over, losing their balance. “Haunt me forever, Yuuri.”

 

It seems less daunting, the future looming before them, it seems like anything is possible like this with a happy boy in his arms. He’s wonderful and bashful and insecure, and Victor will undoubtedly despair at his self-esteem at points, but he’ll take it, greedily. All of it.

 

Brave Yuuri who faces the world even though it’s frightening.

 

He’s Victor’s hero.


End file.
